Review: The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (Amina Al-Sirafi #1)

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (Amina Al-Sirafi #1)
By Shannon Chakraborty

Published By: Harper Voyager
Publication Date: February 28, 2023
Date Read: March 27, 2023
Genre: Adult – Fantasy
Source: Bought
Format: Hardback
Pages: 496

From Goodreads:
Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

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. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.

“Someone who knows too well the price of magic.”

There are no words to describe just how excited I was to get my hands on this book. I read an ARC of City of Brass way back just before it was published, and fell head over heels in love with Shannon Chakraborty’s phenomenal fantasy world and characters in her Daevabad series. It is without a doubt my favourite fantasy series of all time, so I was ecstatic to get into a new series from her. I really wish I had loved this one as much as I love Daevabad… but I had mixed feelings about this one.

First off, I would like to say that I listened to the audiobook of this one and I kind of feel like that may have affected my enjoyment of it a little. The narrator did a fantastic job of bringing the characters and this world to life, but there were a few moments where the character is talking to her scribe and the sound drops out a little, which made it very difficult to hear. I didn’t really think that was a great choice for the audiobook… but the rest of it was good.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is very, VERY different to Shannon Chakraborty’s Daevabad series. The Daevabad series is very rich in magic and fantastical elements surrounding the Djinn… and while there are magical moments in this book they take a while to get to. It is very much focused more on adventure than magic… which is awesome, but after the Daevabad series I did go into this one expecting some high fantasy elements and was very surprised to not really see them until well over the 50% mark.

This book is hilarious. I kind of loved the humour vibes that we had throughout the book. Not to keep comparing it, but Daevabad was a very serious fantasy book so I was surprised to get all of this humour and hilarity happening very soon in the book. But I loved that! I absolutely adored Amina. She is hard as nails, super tough but she is just so comical and I loved her narration of her story. One thing I absolutely loved about this book is almost every character is aged 40+. I feel like in so many fantasy books, even adult fantasy the characters are super young, usually late teens or in their 20s. I loved that we had this adventure happening with characters a little later in life, with more life experience. I loved that Amina was a Mum, and everything she was doing was for her child. I think that gives this book such an edge over other books like it.

My main issue with this book was the pacing. It was really off for me. The first half of the book is super slow. It’s building up a lot of the backstory of Amina and her crew, and journeying to bring the crew back together and while I did enjoy that… I got a little bored. I was dying for some swashbucking action and everytime I would lose focus on the audiobook there’d be something exciting to draw me back in… but then it slowed down again. There is a lot of action and plot in this book, but for me it took far too long to get there. I needed it to happen a lot sooner than it did, but I do believe if I re-read this later in the series, I might appreciate that build up and the backstory more than I currently do now.

Once we got the introduction of the ‘demon husband’ I loved it. Once the magical elements came into it, I was thrown back into Shannon Chakraborty’s phenomenal fantasy worlds and I was so happy that we got that. There is even a nod to Daevabad that made me fangirl like crazy. The last 40% of the book was stunning, and I loved every moment of that 40%. I just wish I’d felt like that before that point. I am super excited to read the next book. After that ending it’s all just so exciting and magical and it has set everything up perfectly for such an exciting adventure. I will re-read Amina Al-Sirafi, as I do feel like choosing the audiobook wasn’t right for me and I may have loved it so much more physically reading it. Shannon Chakraborty is a genius and is still my favourite fantasy author. So definitely pick this one up but be prepared for a slow start.

“To be a woman is to have your story misremembered. Discarded. Twisted.”

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