The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi – Shannon Chakraborty

This is the second in my reviews of the Hugo novel nominees for 2024 (following Starter Villain by John Scalzi).

Full context for this one, my only previous reading experience with Shannon Chakraborty was The City of Brass which I was exceedingly meh about, and never continued the series.

Much of what I wasn’t into in the writing style back then is very much still present here, but it is such a shame, because at least for this one, I am actually really interested in quite a few bits of the premise. A mother as the main character you say? Where she dwells on her motherhood and what it means to her? And relates to her own mother, who has different feelings on the matter? Tell me more! A variety of protagonists at a variety of life stages in our books please, more of this, always! I am so into that… in theory.

Unfortunately, what I am not into:

a) this book
b) pirates

I’ll come back to a) in a second, but I do sometimes get the impression that, as an SFF fan, b) is a personal failing. Everyone seems to love pirates. Pirates are in. Pirates are hot. Gay pirates doubly so. But I’m just… not here for it. I don’t care. It’s one of the several themes* where people will often try to sell the book purely on the strength of it, and I’m just here like… ok, but what about the rest of the book? It is an aggressively value neutral concept for me. I could probably try to do some deep explanation here about the simplification of their role as being outside of societal bounds and thus free of stricture (see things like pirate marriages etc.) erasing the more difficult aspects of them, but that would, frankly, be overcomplicating things. It’s an aesthetic or just… irrational preference. I like what I like, and don’t want I don’t, and here we are.

The interesting bit for this book is that it does actually sorrrrt of touch on those more difficult aspects at times, and does seem to want to situate piracy within its actual context… but never quite goes all in on it. We get distracted by the various directions the plot goes in, and we settle on Amina being, while a little grubby in her soul, ultimately one of the Good Ones and so we live any risk of moral complexity on that score behind, which is something of a shame. I would have been into that.

And I think this epitomises a lot of my… I don’t want to say issues, because that implies thinking this book is bad in a way that isn’t true, but let’s say some of my disappointments with it, as a story. There are a number of themes, concepts and situations that it ambles towards digging into anything more deeply, we shy away somewhat and have some rollicking good plot instead. It’s an adventure story at its core, but it just dips its toes into more difficult waters, more interesting waters, without ever going for a full swim.

On the other hand, when we look at what it’s genuinely trying to do, rather than what I wished it did, it has a jolly good time with it all. It is a slightly dark, pacy adventure. It is a story that puts a mother and her motherhood at the centre – we do get an amount of her musing on her motherhood, and it influencing her decisions throughout, and even being used against her. Chakraborty has fully situated it into not only a well-realised world, one that feels lived in, but also one that we do not typically see a lot of in fantasy. We are somewhat straying away from the old staple of generic medieval Europe fantasy these days (good), but that doesn’t mean all other potential historically-inspired settings have had equal treatment, and “the Indian Ocean and its coastal cities and islands” is not one I can think of being the setting for a single other book I am aware of. One probably does exist, somewhere, sure. But it’s still a setting that has not had much of its day in the sun, and Chakraborty has done well with it here.

Particularly, it’s not just a geographical setting, it’s a world. The story dwells over and over about the melting pot of cultures that exists in this time and place – Amina herself has a very mixed heritage that she references a number of times, as do many of her crew. We know about people and their families, how this family came over from Iraq, how these people all have been sailors of renown for many years, how this city is more hostile to strangers than this other, how this one has made a name for itself in trade. We see people from a variety of backgrounds, religions and cultures throughout, and they are all situated clearly within that setting, at every point. And I really enjoyed that – I enjoyed the moments where Chakraborty was obviously taking pains to say “this is the who and the why and the what for this place and at this time”.

There was also some allusion to polyglossia, and to characters having to speak multiple languages to navigate their place within the world – something I always love to see in my historical fiction, because it would have been such a big part of so many people’s worlds in the past – but we did not delve too deeply here. And I get it, it’s hard to that in fiction without making it the focus or being a bit needlessly obscure in some of your dialogue, so I don’t sigh too hard… but I do love to see it when it’s there. More of this please.

However, to come back to a). While there are things about this book and story I like, it’s ultimately not a book that I was hugely down for. It had themes, or factors, or ideas I’m into, but something about its construction on a macro level just didn’t do it for me. I suspect an amount of that is the prose, which also did not jam with me when I read City of Brass. It was… fine. But not my sort of fine. And the problem with prose is that you simply cannot escape it when reading. If it doesn’t work for you, well, you’re stuck with it unless or until you can find some way to shut it out of your brain. And ignoring things that niggle me has never been one of my specialities. Possibly I wanted more out of the descriptions of places. Possibly I wanted more introspection. I don’t really know exactly what I wanted. But it wasn’t quite this, despite all the little things that made it interesting.

I think it’s a perfectly fine book, and I can see why it excites many people – it’s doing some things that are rare in current fantasy, while also using some other things (pirates) that are very à la mode, and being a very immersive and readable story while doing them all. But I am not those people. That’s just how it goes sometimes.

As a complete aside, though, the Fairyloot edition of it (which I have) is incredibly pretty, and it has one of the most beautiful front-of-book maps I’ve seen in a good long while.

*The others are:
– the old West
– the space race (I’m sorry I’m just not into how real spaceships work, ok?)
– the Victorian era (especially as steampunk)