S. A. ChakrabortyRecensioni

Six stars!

I have been in a reading slump for approximately six months. I’ve started dozens of books, but I haven’t vibed with any of them. Finally after so many false starts, I picked this book and it was the best decision I could have made.

And why not, the book had everything I could want in a fantasy novel, pirates, a fierce FMC that is in my age range, and she’s still kicking ass, mythical creatures, “demons”, a really bad bad-guy, magic. Not to mention the diversity of the characters and the representation. At first I thought the mention of religion (the FMC is Muslim) would take me out of the story, but it did not. It was the main focus of the story, but it what was mentioned made sense in the story.

Retired pirate captain, Amina Al-Sirafi was forced into one last adventure. Reuniting her former crew and ship, is more difficult that expected and noting really goes as planned from then on. The writing was amazing. I was completely caught up in the story; even the exposition kept me totally fascinated. I was emotionally invested in the quest and the characters. The story was like nothing I had ever heard prior. I would definitely read about the further adventures of Amina and her loyal crew.

Arabian tales of a fearsome female pirate sea captain battling magical beings. Maybe better than average for this kind of thing but would definitely not read another.

società, fanatismo e politica delle varie tribù Jiin

Tirannia e guerra jinn

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi ♦ Shannon Chakraborty | Review

I must honestly say that I had never heard of author Shannon Chakraborty before reading this book. Her well-known book series The Daevabad Trilogy also completely passed me by. But meanwhile it was allowed to move into my shelf. The reason for this is The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi which I got in an Exclusive Edition by FairyLoot.



The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi ♦ Shannon Chakraborty

Opinion

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty is an adventurous and entertaining high-seas journey with courageous lady pirates, demon husbands, poisoners, some magic, sea monsters, and a cast of endearing characters. The author conjured up such a breathtaking historical and mythical setting, that it didn’t take me long to be drawn into the story.

I loved how strong, but also with flaws the main character Amina al-Sirafi came around. She sure was a pirate and definitely a good one once. It could feel her struggles to go on another adventures but leaving her little girl behind. I enjoyed how she reunited with her most trusted inner circle of her crew and stormed out onto the wide-open sea to save another young woman from her biggest mistake.

While reading, I often had the feeling I’m actually living in this adventure on the broad seas, I could feel salty wind in my hair. The dark fantasy elements, such as demons and sea monsters, in a somewhat medieval Indian Ocean setting combined with diverse characters and multiple religious backgrounds made me devour the book. I could never tell what the next twist and uncovered mystery would bring and to where this group of adventurers would set sail to.

As much as I enjoyed the plot in its whole, I had a bot of a hard time with the last quarter of the book. The weird magic and discovered sea monsters seemed a bit forced to get a bit more tension in the action. Especially the weird feathered creatures were too much for me. I think a different explanation of how Amina could have survived would have irritated me less.

Conclusion

But the overall package of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi was terrific, and the book was able to carry me away and inspire me. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the next volume because I am sure Amina and her crew still have some fantastic adventures ahead of them.


This review was first published at The Art of Reading.

Loved it!
I hadn't come across anything in this genre, so it's quite welcome. It's like an Islamic (magical djinn) Harry Potter story, but not. The plot is completely different, it is only in how it pulls you in to an entirely new and intricate world that it is similar. As with Harry Potter, for those who know the myths, legends, and folklore, the stories are based on, the construct probably isn't *as* entirely new as it seems to one with far less exposure, like me.
The inspiration to listen to this well narrated (Soneela Nankani) book was actually the very attractive book cover of the 2nd in the series, "The Kingdom of Copper". (Who says you shouldn't judge a book by its cover?) I'd coveted it upon seeing it in Barnes and Noble, so snatched it up when my favorite Friends of the Library bookshop was selling it for $8.00. BUT, you can't read the 2nd book of a series without having first read the first, so I downloaded the audio from Overdrive.
Now I can dig out that beautifully covered Book 2 from my tower of "please read me NOW" books next to my bed and find out what happens next!

A light-hearted romp, which reads a bit as if Mary Read (or Ann Bonney) took the lead role in a Harryhausen-inspired version of Sinbad.

The eponymous heroine is a Yemeni smuggler retired from the sea who is blackmailed by a rich woman into recovering her grand-daughter. Her father just happened to be part of Amina's crew before his death, and Amina felt guilty enough at his death to accept the job (the money for doing so didn't hurt either). Based on the Indian ocean trade routes, the story rattled along, and was reasonably historically accurate.

I liked this much better than The City of Brass (which disappointed me enough and so far has not inspired me to read the others in the series).

Light, but recommended.

This is a fun read. I appreciated the authenticity of the setting, it was unusual to read something deliberately set about 1200 years ago. There is a ton of action and fascinating magic to this and the main character is engaging and interesting. While this is essentially a standard fantasy story, there were a lot of unique elements and flavor.

A deeply satisfying conclusion to the epic trilogy. The heroes get the chance to make interesting, important choices, and so the "happy ending," while happy, is also complex and believable. Truly one of my favorite recent series.

the rumors were true. Passed the 50% mark and was consumed. I love this crew and this lush world so, so much.

An absolutely decadent and luminous fantasy novel- I loved every single page! Nahri is one of my new favorite characters and she really carries the novel so well. Ali became more interesting as the story went on, and I'm super curious to know what happens next with his plot. Super hyped that the third and final book in this trilogy comes out this summer so I can binge the second one and be ready for the finale. :)

Kinda confusing but merman ending so what’s not to like

I loved this trilogy. I found myself captivated from the start of the first book. That said, this book was a harder read for me. I love the characters and it was difficult to see them face so many horrible situations in this book. I got to the point where I could see what was coming and just didn't want to read through their trials. I kept hoping they'd catch a break. While not exactly what I would classify as a happy ending, this book gave the trilogy a fitting ending. I'd like to have a peek at their lives a few years down the line, but this leaves you to imagine how everyone's life played out. I would definitely read more books by this author.

This is a beautiful example of what storytelling should be. I found myself absolutely lost in this world and hated to return to mine. Generally speaking, I don't like stories with a lot of political intrigue, but even the politics were not off-putting in this novel. They are absolutely integral to the choices made by the main characters. I'm not going into the plot because you can get the gist of that from reading the synopsis. I'm going to say I think this series, while not so much traditional fantasy, is great epic fantasy. Well worth the time to read. I'm looking forward to book 3, although I suspect I will be sad to see the trilogy end.

I love this book. It has been while since I've read a good epic fantasy and I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I can't wait for book 2.

I was so desperate to read this after finishing the first book that I got a digital library copy to start while I waited for my physical copy to come in from expedited shipping. 🤣 SO FRICKIN GOOD.

Well-written; fully fleshed characters; imaginative world building; complex social/cultural/personal issues that preclude anyone being all good or all evil. But at the end of the day, it just wasn't my cup of tea. But I can nonetheless recommend it to those whose cup of tea it is.

This is book 1 in a very interesting fantasy series with a different background. The two main characters are Nahri, who is a con artist and thief in 18th century Cairo during the French occupation, and Ali the son of a King in the hidden city of Daevabad. Nahri has always had strange abilities, such as picking up languages without even trying and being able to diagnose and even heal illnesses. When she hosts a ceremony to quieten a disturbed girl, supposedly by pacifying a djinn possessing her (which Nahri knows is not the case), she makes the mistake of chanting part of the words in a language which she believes to be the one her unknown parents spoke but has never met anyone else who knows it. Despite her lack of belief in magic, she summons up a powerful djinn, called Dara (for short as his name is much longer), and the girl who is the subject of the ritual becomes possessed by an iffrit , a demonic type of djinn. This creature comes after Nahri, who is apparently a descendent of the Nahdi, a tribe of djinn healers and rulers believed until now to be extinct, and Dara ends up rescuing her despite his anger at her for dragging him from another dimension to serve her.

The other viewpoint character, Ali, is a djinn himself, younger son of the ruler of Daevabad. His tribe converted to Islam, and Ali is a devout believer. His moral standards have led him to provide monetary and other assistance to the downtrodden part-human inhabitants known as shafit, but his good nature has been abused, and the recipients of his largesse are arming themselves against the rulers. Ali is then torn between his loyalty to his family and his compassion for the downtrodden, with tragic results.

The two characters come together after Dara brings Nahri to the city, which is a refuge from the iffrit who cannot enter. A love triangle of sorts develops. I wasn't a fan of that as I didn't think the story really needed it: I could believe an attraction developing between Ali and Nahri due to their common interests, but the relationship with Dara seemed to be a kind of instalove and pure physical attraction. He has a lot of unpleasant character traits including misogyny, racism and a tendency to resort to violence as the answer to conflict.

The worldbuilding in this book is extensive and intricate. It runs the risk of causing confusion at times. There is a lot of backstory about the origin of the six djinn tribes and why they are corporeal and no longer creatures of fire as originally created. Quite often this becomes an infodump. There are unresolved contradictions, such as the original reason for Ali's family being rulers of Daevabad. Their ancestor led a rebellion against the Nahdi, the old rulers, because of the cruelty they inflicted on the shafit - but in the present day, Ali's family use the same brutal methods against the shafit and his father compels Ali to preside over a horrific Nahdi style execution.

The last part of the book is a rollercoaster but it does take a long while to get there and I got a bit tired of Nahri's brattish behaviour once they reached the city and she was supposed to be learning how to heal the Nahdi way. I'm not sure I understood all the nuances: the djinn have relics, items in which part of their soul has been placed, but I think there were also other objects of significance. Some of that went over my head. It was also a bit confusing that the tribe who are still loyal to the Nahdi (and hence Nahri) are called Daeva rather than djinn - it seems djinn was an Arabic word which Ali's family adopted for themselves and other tribes came to do the same. That seemed an unnecessary complication. But I have already purchased book 2 on Kindle because I enjoyed the opening volume - only my reservations held it back from being a 5 star read.

Reason read: I read this one for a fantasy read.
The story is of pirates, motherhood, magic, religion, etc
Its a mix of stuff and does have "bases covered" basically skillfully into the story but not fully and the story would have been just as good if not better without trying to dot i's and cross ts. Overall the story is of a young mother, former pirate that is bribed into searching for a grandmother's missing granddaughter. And then the adventure begins. It is engaging and it reads as if this is just one of a series. probably 5 books if I were to guess. Would I read more. No probably not. Not because the stories wasn't engaging but because I don't lean toward series but I the book fits the moment, I might. Rating 3.4½

What fun! I have a soft spot for middle-aged women going on adventures that society tells them they ought not enjoy because they're better off at home weaving or breeding. The end got annoying when the obvious set-up for the next book dragged things out but that's only a small quibble and it was such a grand tale.½

It took a while to get into the book. I was very confused by the different Tribes at first, especially since one of the tribes took the name of the whole Daeva race. The brief description of the tribes at the start of the book tried to be helpful, but wasn't really. I wish it had been more like The Sunbearer Trials and had a brief summary of the creation story at the start, but once I got to that point in the text, it made a lot more sense.

I really enjoyed the action scenes and by the end of the book I was hustling to know what happened next. I found the romance a little annoying, but wasn't surprised by it. I loved Nahri's character growth, and I'm excited to see what happens to her and Ali in the next stories.½

I liked this quite a bit more than the first, and can't put my finger on it- maybe because the world has been built, we can spend more time on character development, especially with a five year time skip? Various factions have made the city of Daevabad into a powderkeg, and although 2/3rds of our protagonists would like to do go and generate peace, history (and their parents) stand in the way. I'm intrigued to see where it goes based the epilogue- the story is far from over (though magic might be!)

I read this for r/Fantasy's goodreads book of the month for April 2019.

Really neat worldbuilding, and complex characters that interest me, though I don't know if I'd necessarily get along with any of them for extended periods of time (Nahri if anyone, but she'd probably fleece me). Dara is an ally for the most part, but he's got some shitty ideas on blood purity (could argue that's what he was raised with but when your magical being lives for millennia...?) and fantastic racism, though as I'm typing this I recognize most of Daeva society can be described as "shitty ideas on blood purity and fantastic racism". Prince Alizayid is our sympathetic reader-insert because of his naive nature, but he's also a zealot thinking about all the relative sins around him. In some ways, he reminds me of Moses-as-prince in Prince of Egypt where he lives in luxury but when he watches a slave get beaten realizes yiiiiiiikes, his society is full of inequality.

This makes me wonder about likability of characters, and whether or not I like a book- for example, I haaaaaaate Richard whatshisface in Sword of Truth, but I also hate the book because bleghhh multiple things frustrate me about it. City of Brass has an interesting enough world & fantasy politics that I can deal with characters baked in a society with complex social issues. The king of Daevabad is verrrrrry pragmatic and while easy to paint him as a villain, he could be so much worse and... shit's complicated!

It ends unresolved, so I'll look for the next book at some point.

Hesitant to call this #ownvoices because Chakraborty is a white convert to Islam, but she's done her homework and elements of Islamic mythology feel well researched (as she mentions in the acknowledgements, this kind of grew out of historical fan fiction) while living in Cairo.

First off- the audiobook for this is phenomenal. Lameece Issaq really imbues Amina with chatty auntie catching you up on what she's been up to, her joys and her weariness, along with asides to the scribe Jamal (whom she's telling this tale to). This book also came at the right time for me, as a new mother while I think about who I am (and making room for motherhood in my nest of identities while not losing my former sense of self). I really enjoyed seeing an older protagonist- in a sea of teenagers dealing with immortal beings (which in hindsight the Daevabad trilogy kind of does- I still need to read [b:The Empire of Gold|52166786|The Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy, #3)|S.A. Chakraborty|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1572578104l/52166786._SY75_.jpg|61384460]), it's great to see an older crew. I'm also not familiar with the medieval Indian Ocean and I like seeing rich historical environments for fantasy that I don't know!

I also recognize Dalila is like... every single D&D/Pathfinder character I've made, a vaguely creepy science lady who just... collects things in jars. Oops.

I got to the final 10% and I wondered how things would resolve and then realized oh, this is just part one of a new series- so hooray, more adventures of the Marawati crew!

I really liked this book! I thought the world building was so well crafted. I also really liked the two main characters that were the focus of this novel. I really liked the world building and the myths that were the focus. This was a super fun read and the only thing I struggled with was the pacing and the tale end of the read. It was a great read and I am super excited to read the second book soon!