The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S. A. Chakraborty (2023)
My wife loves lady pirates, heists, and stories in which someone who’s retired is forced to do One Last Job. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi combines all three, and does so in a fantastical world pulled from Middle-Eastern history and legend. That’s nothing new for S. A. Chakraborty, who burst onto the scene several years back with the Daevabad trilogy, which began with 2017’s wonderful City of Brass. Once an infamous pirate and smuggler, Amina al-Sirafi now just wants to live a quiet life with her daughter. But when the mother of a former associate and crew mate tracks her down and makes her an offer that’s simply too good to refuse, Amina heads back out onto the high seas, where she’s soon caught up in a world of myth and sorcery. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the matter of her demonic ex-husband. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is a fun romp that mixes in some observations about race, class, and gender without ever becoming preachy or, more importantly, distracting from the high seas adventure. As I noted with The City of Brass, the Middle-Eastern elements and inspirations were a consistently nice change of pace from most fantasy, which tends to be Western and European in its origins. A sequel, titled The Tapestry of Fate, was just released, which I intend to read… once my wife’s finished with it, of course.
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