Goldenborn
Ama Ofosua Lieb
Hardcover/Ebook/Audio
ISBN: 978-1546147466
Scholastic Press, June 2, 2026, 416 pgs

After her father is injured in a strange supernatural incident, teenage detective Akoma Addo is recruited to San Francisco PD’s secret anti-magic task force. She’s just hitting her stride when an attempt to retrieve an important stolen artifact from Ghana leads her into a rabbit hole lined with figures from Ghanaian folklore brought to life, and drags her friends, family, and new crush in behind her.

There are a lot of books with big themes, expansive and canon-shifting world-building, and unconventional ways of working with genre conventions happening in 2026 that also manage to be pure, unselfconscious fun. This is definitely one of them. The promo blurb led me to expect a straightforward YA fantasy based on West African spirituality and mythology. To my delight, Goldenborn is exactly that, but also so much more.

This story is set in the near future, and the SFPD task force Akoma works with relies on things like AI microbots, nanopatches, and self-driving cars to get to the bottom of their cases. At the same time, African trickster spirits, vampires, and shape-shifters are very real in Akoma’s world and regularly pull off feats that no in-world technology could explain. To add to the fun, Akoma herself has no great love for magic, but somehow seems to be constantly surrounded by it. (Ten points if you’ve read enough speculative fiction to guess where that goes.) The result is a hi-tech, hi-magic world that manages to balance fantasy, science fiction, and folklore retelling almost perfectly. On top of that, it’s also a detective thriller at times, although eventually the science fiction and fantasy elements sideline that aspect of the story.

What grounds it all is Ghanaian culture and folklore. While AfricaTown is sadly not a real neighborhood in San Francisco, it makes a wonderfully welcoming setting for this book. It feels like a great place to be, full of culture, food, fashion, and a close community. Every disruption and loss that happens there is all the more impactful because it’s such a vibrant, comforting setting. The real-life thefts of Adinkra sculptures to be displayed in foreign museums form the foundation of a critical plot point that lands firmly. Mythological figures—some of whom may be a little unfamiliar to readers who aren’t Ghanaian themselves—are introduced in scenarios that unexpectedly mesh with the futuristic settings. There are plenty of intersections with other cultures as well, respectfully done in ways that make sense to the overall story. Lieb is very good at implanting both the magical and the technofuturistic into the mundane, and the resulting world is vivid and enthralling.

Because AfricaTown is so vividly rendered, the characters don’t have to do too much heavy lifting to bridge any gaps between real culture and speculative storytelling. This gives them a chance to breathe and unfold into really unique creations, especially in the case of Esi, Akoma’s grandmother. While I won’t spoil any of the fun of the story for readers by explaining exactly who and what she is, I will say that one of my favorite things about the book is how grandmother and grandchild eventually work together to do their part to vanquish evil.

This is also billed as a YA novel, and while Goldenborn is totally appropriate for teens and tweens, it’s complex and exciting enough for adults to enjoy as well. It has more of a new-adult feel, even though Akoma is only seventeen. There’s young romance, a little swearing, and a lot of violence and suspense. This is the kind of book that parents and kids can read, enjoy, and talk about together, but also the kind of book anyone could just get into for their own enjoyment, because the story is just that good.

Apparently, there’s a sequel to this coming soon, and I couldn’t be happier. The ending of this book is satisfying, but there’s clearly a lot more story to be told here, and I’m genuinely interested to see where Lieb takes us next. This is a great read for fans of LaDarrion Williams’s Blood at the Root, Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn, or Wole Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon.