The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

Shannon Chakraborty
Completed 8/16/2024, Reviewed 8/17/2024
4 stars

This book was a terrific read, especially after the disastrous last book I read.  I loved the main character, the prose, the world building; everything just tickled my fancy.  Except for it slowing down a little before the big climax, it was fast-paced and interesting.  I generally like fantasy from the Middle East, with golems and djinns and the myriads of magical beings dreamt out of the sea and the desert.  This book was nominated for a 2024 Hugo.  It didn’t win, but would have been very high on my list.  

Amina is a retired pirate.  She was one of the greatest, most notorious pirates in the Indian Ocean.  Now she lives at home with her daughter and mother.  One day the mother of one of her former crew shows up and offers Amina a fortune to find the woman’s granddaughter.  The woman basically extorts her into the search, threatening the lives of Amina’s daughter and mother.  Amina takes the job but slowly finds out that there is more to this than just a missing granddaughter.  The kidnapper is a Frank from the crusades who was searching for one of the greatest magical objects ever.  So Amina reassembles some of the main members of her old crew to help her on this quest, with magical islands, bird-men, cthulu-reminiscent sea creatures, and an old husband who turned out to be a demon.

Even though it took me a while to read this book, I found it engrossing right from the start.  The story of Amina’s retired life was actually interesting, probably because it is based in an Arab/African setting rather than European-style fantasy.  And when you read as much as I do, different is good. 😊  The process of assembling her crew was as thrilling as some of the faster paced sections of the book.  And each old member she found added insight into Amina’s life as pirate and a person.  I’ve already forgotten the names of the major characters from her crew, but each personality was interesting.

Of course, the best character was Amina, a complex person trying to juggle her return to the seas with her responsibility to her family.  As this is the first of a series with “Adventures” in the title, we can expect that the conflict will continue into the next books.  But it is done well, with her longing for her daughter and constantly second-guessing her decisions.

Her old demon husband, whose name I think was Raksh, was fun.  He was ultimately a selfish, self-seeking coward, but colorful nonetheless.  I liked how he tried to manipulate her into doing things his way to save his own skin and Amina being able to see through it, mostly.  I also liked the granddaughter.  She was scholar and a self-made magician who had her own reasons for letting the Frank take advantage of her powers.    

I give this book four stars out of five.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, but found it dragged towards the end.  The climax itself was tremendous, but the build up to it was slow at times.  However, I’d still be interested in the sequels as they come out.  I really enjoyed the prose, good descriptions without taking away from the action.  And the different creatures and monsters were fun.  This recently came up as a book club nominee and I’ll probably work on getting it nominated a few more times.  I think it would be a good discussion book.