The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

I must preface this with the fact that I am a notoriously slow reader with poor "stamina" and this felt like three books instead of one to me. Turning over the final page, I felt more exhausted than satisfied. But the fact that I'm still rating it as I am should signal how well the strengths of this book still manage to outweigh my (entirely subjective) misgivings.

Cover art notwithstanding, I somehow convinced myself that this was gonna be more historical fiction with some magical realism elements floating in the background. And for the first half of the book that certainly was the case; going into this I was loosely aware of the long history of the Indian Ocean and all the cultures on it that interacted with each other. Long before Vasco da Gama showed up on the scene and changed everything, there was this whole other cultural sphere going on during the Islamic Golden Age that often gets neglected in favor of imagery of desert palaces and caravans of camels linking cities from Persia to Al Andalus. And I'm glad that I finally came across some fictional media that dove into this neglected historical period.

The "gang of past-their-prime adventurers coming out of retirement for one last job" is something I've seen done before, but to date this is the best iteration of it that I've come across. I really enjoyed the side cast of supporting pirates, but I wish they had had more time in the spotlight before the second half of the story turned to hard fantasy and the magical threats quickly became too dangerous for them to be relevant. For a story that seemed to initially be leaning hard into a theme of relying on the power of friendship, our protagonist sure ended up doing a lot on her own.

I had issues with the pacing and tone shift in the latter part of the book where we went from swashbuckling hijinks to high stakes sword and sorcery, and there was a strange bait-and-switch with a side villain who was initially painted as a great and terrible evil but ended up being completely overshadowed by the actual antagonist. But overall the strong opening just about counterbalanced the unexpected ending for me.

I was thoroughly charmed by this book — an adventure-filled, magical story of a pirate queen who became a legend. It took an era that I know nothing about — the seafaring cultures of the 12th century Indian Ocean, especially focused on Oman, Yemen, and Somalia, as filtered through the 1001 Nights, and gave it a contemporary twist by focusing on the glorious Amina al-Sarafi. She’s a Muslim former pirate who has retired to raise her daughter, but gets pulled into One Last Heist by being offered an eye-popping sum of money to go rescue the kidnapped child of one of her former crew. An early chapter in which she successfully defends two idiots who are looking for treasure from an angry sea demon sets the tone for later encounters with creatures more and more magical. Amina has a live-and-let-live attitude toward her queer crew members, which is refreshing. The first in a planned trilogy.