In the Nine Lands, the past is not finished with the living. Old grievances fuel new rebellions, the monarchy faces growing resistance, and the history of an entire people remains shrouded in secrets. In A Dance of Burning Blades, the second book in her Invoker Trilogy, M. H. Ayinde returns to a fantasy world where the struggle for power is also a struggle over who gets to remember and what has been deliberately forgotten.

Following the greyblood attack on Lordsgrave, resentment against the king continues to grow. Clan Adatali has risen in open rebellion, war is raging in the Feverlands, and a humble tree feller who bears a striking resemblance to the missing invoker Jinao Mizito remains determined to avenge his brother. Meanwhile, the king’s daughter Lyela is pursuing her own plans from the shadows. As these conflicts converge, the fate of the Nine Lands hangs on more than who will emerge victorious: its people must also confront the history stolen from them.

Ayinde’s worldbuilding draws on a range of cultural traditions, including Yoruba cosmology. In a previous interview with Brittle Paper about A Song of Legends Lost, the first book in the trilogy, she discussed the influences behind its distinctive magic system, in which invokers summon their ancestors to fight alongside them. Drawing on ancestral traditions alongside the imaginative possibilities of epic fantasy, Ayinde makes inheritance something tangible: the past can return not just through memory but through the bodies and battles of the living.

That idea gives the sequel’s questions about stolen history particular weight. Across the Nine Lands, knowledge has been withheld for centuries, and uncovering it could change how its people understand their world. Ayinde’s fantasy is interested not only in the spectacle of war and magic but also in the relationship between history, identity, and power: who gets to preserve a people’s past, who has the authority to rewrite it, and what might happen when those whose histories have been taken begin to reclaim them?

With A Dance of Burning Blades, Ayinde continues to expand the world introduced in A Song of Legends Lost, raising the stakes of its political conflicts while bringing its central questions about memory and power into sharper focus.

Here’s the synopsis:

A DANCE OF RAGE. A DANCE OF RUIN. A DANCE OF BURNING BLADES.

Tension simmers across the Nine Lands. In the capital, the people of Lordsgrave seethe with resentment after the horrors of the greyblood attack. Clan Adatali is in open rebellion against the king, and as war in the Feverlands rages on, a humble tree feller—who looks a lot like missing invoker Jinao Mizito—has not forgotten the promise he made to avenge his brother.

Meanwhile, in the shadows, the king’s daughter Lyela continues to move her pieces across the board. Can the people of the Nine Lands reclaim their stolen history and unlock the secrets that have been kept from them for centuries?

Buy A Dance of Burning Blades here