Birth of a Dynasty, by Chinaza Bado, is something a little bit old and a little bit new. It has the bones of many modern-era epic fantasy hits, and it’s dialed in to a lot of the strongest tropes that make this genre popular. While it isn’t reinventing the wheel, it is also an African-inspired political fantasy that feels like it opens doors to new settings that are rich and delightful, making the book a lot of fun to read. I enjoyed this debut so much that it made our Best of 2025 list. I have just been extremely remiss in getting to the review.
The will of the royal family is absolute, and their fear of prophecy drives many of their cruel decisions. The land of Birth of a Dynasty is one carved up into several aristocratic families that each have massive holdings, with a centralized royal household that rules over all of them. When the royals get a prophecy that their downfall will come at the hands of one of these lower nobles, they begin to purge their potential destroyers. We open the book during these purges and watch as it forges our protagonists into rebels that will fulfill the very prophecy the royals hoped to avoid. Our two main points of view are M’Kuru, the only surviving son of the Mukundi Noble Family after this massacre, and Zikora, the only daughter of the Nnamani family, who dreams of becoming a fierce warrior. Both of them have been wronged by the royals on the lands, and they both set out on winding and convoluted paths to revenge.
This book is a fun take on the revenge trope featuring two very likable protagonists who have interesting paths to vengeance. M’Kuru starts off our story as somewhat of a sheltered, spoiled boy who must immerse himself in jobs and roles that get his hands dirty with a lot of hard work in order to slowly creep his way into a position of power to get revenge for his family. Inversely, Zikora is a very down-to-earth woman of the people who doesn’t care at all for the trappings of power her station grants her and would much rather be a part of the warrior cast of her region. She must learn to step up to the opportunities her station provides her and use the power available to her to influence the courts to keep her family safe and bring down the royals.
Despite being very believable children, M’Kuru and Zikora both have very developed and interesting personalities that feel very suited to the paths they set out on. Their unique established skills, strengths, and flaws all blend very well into the deceptions that they present in order to achieve their objectives, and they were both a delight to follow as our windows into this vivid world. Bado shows great insight into where they focused the narrative of the story so that the progression and evolution of the protagonists feel very anchored in the world that the book establishes. I really enjoyed both of the children’s journeys, and I like how their paths feel very different but seem to have the same destination.
My one major complaint is that the prose could be very inconsistent. There are instances where pieces of dialogue stuck with me and really brought the characters to life. However, some descriptions read like unedited word salad and needed another pass. One particularly memorable chapter used the word “blood” in a sentence five times to describe a number of things when setting a scene, and it fully ripped me out of the story for a while.
Overall, Birth of a Dynasty feels perfect for those who love classic epic fantasy but are looking for new worlds and mythos as the inspiration for the story. The protagonists are both delightful, and I was heavily invested in their stories from the moment I met them. This is simply a very solid, fun book for anyone looking for a good vengeance story.
Rating: Birth of a Dynasty – 8.5/10
-Andrew
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
