Review: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shannon Chakraborty returns with a new series set in the Indian Ocean of the 11th century, and in the same universe as her star-making Daevabad Trilogy - unsurprisingly, a Daeva or two makes a cameo appearance in this story. But here, we focus instead on a more unconventional heroine than Nahri ever was: Amina Al-Sirafi, once a pirate, now a mother, and once again called to action, this time to help an important lady get her missing grandkid back.

Along the way, she gathers a ragtag crew of the scrappiest sailors in these waters, each from their own unique backgrounds - some Jewish, some Christian, some from Arabia, some from Africa, some from India (and in Amina’s case, she’s got ancestry in at least Arabia, Gujarat, and China), some gay or trans (though the latter isn’t revealed until the end of the book), and of course many Muslims, including Amina herself, who’s devout but also prone to sin because, well, she’s only human, despite all the wild adventure stories that follow her wherever she goes. And to be fair, she did marry the wrong fella who turned out to be a demon in disguise…but holy crap is Raksh the most ludicrous and intentionally annoying such character you’ll ever meet. And Amina is no slouch in the snark department, even more noticeably so than Nahri or Dara when she gets to tell the story in a first person POV, albeit with weird one sided spats with Jamal, the scribe tasked with telling her tale.

It’s a tale of high seas, high adventure, and a bit of deus ex machina (indeed Allah is most merciful), and even some brief bouts of high hilarity. Usually when Raksh is involved. Or Amina repeatedly mispronouncing the European Crusader mercenary villain’s name, Falco Palmanestra, butchering the syllables of his last name to babble every time. Or that particular line where Amina demands that someone stop speaking like a court astrologer on hashish and give it to her straight.

Luckily, Chakraborty ends the story pretty neatly, though there’s definitely the promise of more adventures. It could be a while before we get to see the next book, given Chakraborty’s love of exhaustive historical research. But I’ll still be buying when that happens. For sure.

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