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A review by mafiabadgers
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty
adventurous
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
First read 03/2025
Perhaps I had my hopes set a little too high for this one. Periodically I dip my toes into pirate fiction, searching for something with a real swashbuckling thrill, but I've never found anything that was entirely satisfying. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi wasn't bad per se, but it never quite clicked.
The diegetic foreword gives us a few popular legends about Amina al-Sirafi, before telling us "that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered." This isn't conveying a historical belief about what women are like, but rather a comment about women as a collective and their treatment by a society that they are excluded from. It suggests a collective feminist consciousness that feels jarring from a supposedly mediaeval narrator. This is far from the only time in the book that characters feel more informed by Twitter politics than contemporary modes of thought—at one point, Amina declares that:
Perhaps I had my hopes set a little too high for this one. Periodically I dip my toes into pirate fiction, searching for something with a real swashbuckling thrill, but I've never found anything that was entirely satisfying. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi wasn't bad per se, but it never quite clicked.
The diegetic foreword gives us a few popular legends about Amina al-Sirafi, before telling us "that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered." This isn't conveying a historical belief about what women are like, but rather a comment about women as a collective and their treatment by a society that they are excluded from. It suggests a collective feminist consciousness that feels jarring from a supposedly mediaeval narrator. This is far from the only time in the book that characters feel more informed by Twitter politics than contemporary modes of thought—at one point, Amina declares that:
I should have reached out sooner, and for that, I do apologize. But I am sorry for what happened at the village. I would never want you to think I would make such a distinction between our peoples, and if I've acted in a manner that suggests so... I need to change that.
She's dictating the story to a scribe, and I'm willing to overlook all the usual conventions of this premise: that she never misspeaks or backtracks; that the scribe can take her words down verbatim; that she can recount every line of dialogue spoken by her and others. Since there is no in-fiction translator rendering her words in contemporary American English I am less willing to overlook phrasings like "get off of me" and "Anyway. Back to that night." Amina makes a point of beginning her narrative in a non-conventional, exciting manner, but within three pages she's breaking off to tell her learned scribe that "This part of the world has always been rich; the Romans once called us Arabia Felix, “Blessed Arabia,” for our access to the sea, reliable trade routes, and lucrative frankincense groves." When she's offered a million dinars, the explanation of how much she could buy with it feels less like an expression of her shock and more like a clumsy attempt to tell the reader how much money this is. It's jarring for this sort of exposition to be included in a story told between two historical individuals, and I do wish it had been left out, or worked into the book more elegantly.
The importance of religion is often glossed over in (historical) fantasy, so it was good to see it pervading this book. I think Amina could have spent a bit more time experiencing ethical qualms, though, to give her a bit more heft; as a character, she's more memorable for her snarky narrative tone than psychological depth. Her crew and her relationships with them don't get a lot of time, and they're all so bloody nice and emotionally intelligent that there's never any friction between them. Aside from their external enemies, Raksh is the only person to really antagonise the crew (Salima too, I suppose, but she's mostly off-page). Unfortunately, any animosity towards him comes through pretty weakly, Amina often being distracted from his actions by his good looks, which tend to position him in an 'attractive bad boy' sort of role. To Chakraborty's credit, he doesn't have the stereotypical bad boy personality, and he might have been my favourite character simply because his attitude doesn't conform to expectations.
The writing can be clunky, and I think this was the biggest thing holding me back from really getting into it. The locations were splendid, particularly Aden, the city built in the crater of an extinct sea volcano, and the ships were well described whenever they were viewed from a distance. More effort to evoke the experience of sailing would have improved things, though. The action scenes were consistently the best parts of the book, and the ones on the water were the best of the lot. In the end, it came down on the right side 'meh' to earn a second star, but I doubt I'll continue the series.