Jessica
Despite a slow start, this proved to be a fun book. Amina al-Sirafi herself is a great, unconventional, adventure hero. She's a forty-something mediaeval Muslim woman, a single mother, and at the novel's beginning a reformed character: a retired pirate captain who's given up the grog and her past habit of making poor choices in men. But of course she gets sucked back into the game, and basically in the form of a fantastical heist novel, she gets the old crew back together for one last mission... which turns into the first of five last missions because this is the first instalment of a series.
So, in this instalment, Amina is offered a more-than-life-changing amount of money to retrieve the teenage grandchild of a fabulously wealthy woman, who has apparently been kidnapped. As if the money weren't enough, the teenager is also the child of one of Amina's former crewmates – one who died in some horrible gruesome way that Amina feels is ultimately her fault, because the culprit was her husband. Of course there are twists and turns, and the supernatural comes to play an increasingly large part in the storyline, drawing on Arabic mythology familiar to me only from Chakraborty's previous series, the Daevabad trilogy. But whereas that series included a lot more political scheming, this book was much more straightforwardly swashbuckling adventure.
One of the elements of this book that stood out to me was Amina's demonic estranged husband, Raksh... from the moment he came back and the narrative started to emphasise how unimaginably attractive and incredibly good in bed this guy was, I was like, "Oh no, they get back together, don't they." And they don't, really (although they do have sex again, in a scene which is elided over) but it is obvious that this guy is going to reappear in future books, with tension arising from his unreliability as an ally as well as how attracted Amina obviously still is to him. So yeah, that's a thing. I will say that once he came back, he didn't seem nearly as awful as he'd been built up to be in that first half of the book. I thought he was going to be some kind of out-and-out sadistic abuser, but he's not really. He's flighty and deeply selfish, and more to the point he's a demon, so when people "jokingly" offer their souls to him he can't resist. It's a bit unserious but I guess the alternative would've been a reconciliation plotline with a sadistic murderer, and that might be a bit dark for this style of book.
Something else that I think is worth mentioning is just how refreshing it is that this book doesn't pander to Orientalism at all. Lots of people in the West have this idea that the Islamic world is somehow fundamentally different from us: eternally backwards, bound by tradition, with people who are somehow not driven by the same human nature that drives all of us (you know, where people like merriment and sex and having some degree of agency in their own lives). While this novel is very much rooted in its mediaeval Indian Ocean setting, it also tells a story using (mostly) realistic characters instead of Orientalist caricatures. Amina is (in her own words) not a "good Muslim", what with her weakness to booze and men. There is a gay character, and a trans character. While the book doesn't try to glorify that time period either (there are numerous references to slavery, extreme poverty, various manifestations of sexism, interreligious violence, and so forth), it reflects the fact that there have always been people defying traditional norms, and that a life of piracy on the open sea is a pretty liberating, if dangerous, choice for such a person in that time period. Muslims have never been inherently more pious or traditional than anyone else, and in fact most people throughout history have been much less devout than we're typically told they were in school. I mean, the novel is also a swashbuckling fantasy adventure, so it's not very realistic in the sense that most people throughout history didn't have personal dealings with supernatural creatures, but still.
Having said that, the strongest character in this novel by far is Amina herself. Now, there are practical limits on how much the rest of the characters could've been fleshed out, because there are a lot of them and there's also a lot of plot to get through. But certainly the villain is pretty 2D, and you know, it just felt worth noting, even though it seems in keeping with this kind of adventure novel.
Overall, I enjoyed this. I'll definitely be reading the next one.
Despite a slow start, this proved to be a fun book. Amina al-Sirafi herself is a great, unconventional, adventure hero. She's a forty-something mediaeval Muslim woman, a single mother, and at the novel's beginning a reformed character: a retired pirate captain who's given up the grog and her past habit of making poor choices in men. But of course she gets sucked back into the game, and basically in the form of a fantastical heist novel, she gets the old crew back together for one last mission... which turns into the first of five last missions because this is the first instalment of a series.
So, in this instalment, Amina is offered a more-than-life-changing amount of money to retrieve the teenage grandchild of a fabulously wealthy woman, who has apparently been kidnapped. As if the money weren't enough, the teenager is also the child of one of Amina's former crewmates – one who died in some horrible gruesome way that Amina feels is ultimately her fault, because the culprit was her husband. Of course there are twists and turns, and the supernatural comes to play an increasingly large part in the storyline, drawing on Arabic mythology familiar to me only from Chakraborty's previous series, the Daevabad trilogy. But whereas that series included a lot more political scheming, this book was much more straightforwardly swashbuckling adventure.
One of the elements of this book that stood out to me was Amina's demonic estranged husband, Raksh... from the moment he came back and the narrative started to emphasise how unimaginably attractive and incredibly good in bed this guy was, I was like, "Oh no, they get back together, don't they." And they don't, really (although they do have sex again, in a scene which is elided over) but it is obvious that this guy is going to reappear in future books, with tension arising from his unreliability as an ally as well as how attracted Amina obviously still is to him. So yeah, that's a thing. I will say that once he came back, he didn't seem nearly as awful as he'd been built up to be in that first half of the book. I thought he was going to be some kind of out-and-out sadistic abuser, but he's not really. He's flighty and deeply selfish, and more to the point he's a demon, so when people "jokingly" offer their souls to him he can't resist. It's a bit unserious but I guess the alternative would've been a reconciliation plotline with a sadistic murderer, and that might be a bit dark for this style of book.
Something else that I think is worth mentioning is just how refreshing it is that this book doesn't pander to Orientalism at all. Lots of people in the West have this idea that the Islamic world is somehow fundamentally different from us: eternally backwards, bound by tradition, with people who are somehow not driven by the same human nature that drives all of us (you know, where people like merriment and sex and having some degree of agency in their own lives). While this novel is very much rooted in its mediaeval Indian Ocean setting, it also tells a story using (mostly) realistic characters instead of Orientalist caricatures. Amina is (in her own words) not a "good Muslim", what with her weakness to booze and men. There is a gay character, and a trans character. While the book doesn't try to glorify that time period either (there are numerous references to slavery, extreme poverty, various manifestations of sexism, interreligious violence, and so forth), it reflects the fact that there have always been people defying traditional norms, and that a life of piracy on the open sea is a pretty liberating, if dangerous, choice for such a person in that time period. Muslims have never been inherently more pious or traditional than anyone else, and in fact most people throughout history have been much less devout than we're typically told they were in school. I mean, the novel is also a swashbuckling fantasy adventure, so it's not very realistic in the sense that most people throughout history didn't have personal dealings with supernatural creatures, but still.
Having said that, the strongest character in this novel by far is Amina herself. Now, there are practical limits on how much the rest of the characters could've been fleshed out, because there are a lot of them and there's also a lot of plot to get through. But certainly the villain is pretty 2D, and you know, it just felt worth noting, even though it seems in keeping with this kind of adventure novel.
Overall, I enjoyed this. I'll definitely be reading the next one.