The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi

A Novel

496 pages

English language

Published Dec. 20, 2023 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:
9780062963505

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4 stars (1 review)

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. …

5 editions

An Adventure

4 stars

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty is a great historical fantasy adventure.

Amina Al-Sirafi is a middle-aged piratey sea captain who is persuaded out of retirement and away from her daughter. What she thinks will be a fact finding and rescue mission to recover the daughter of a former crewman turns into a full scale supernatural adventure.

This book had a lovely, satisfying ending. Open ended with room for more stories, but not in a cliffhanger way.

I got my book from Book of the Month Club and read it in hardcover, as well as listening to the audiobook for some of it.