Literature / The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

This tale will sound unbelievable. What proofs and documents could be collected are reproduced, but when it came to the nakhudha, this scribe felt it best to let Amina speak for herself. To resist the urge to shape and couch her words. But for the sake of honesty, another truth will be confessed. Her adventures are not only being told as evidence of God's marvels.
They are being told to entertain.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is a 2023 historical fantasy novel by Shannon A. Chakraborty, author of The Daevabad Trilogy. Like her previous work, it draws on Middle Eastern history and legend, taking place in a world that humans have shared with supernatural entities since time immemorial. It takes place in the 12th century. Although the story takes place in places in and around the southern Arabian peninsula such as Yemen, Socotra, and Somalia, the Crusades influence events and the lives of several characters.

The legendary sea captain Amina al-Sirafi — pirate, smuggler, explorer, and adventurer — is pulled out of a ten-year retirement by a job offer. The daughter of a long-dead friend has been kidnapped by Falco Palamenestra, a mercenary with an unwholesome obsession with the occult, and her grandmother will spare no expense or coercion to get her precious Dunya back. Amina must take to the seas once again with her most trusted companions from her old life: Dalila the poisoner, Tinbu the first mate, and Majed the navigator. Their voyage proves to be much more than a simple rescue mission, entangling Amina with ancient magical forces and a spectre from her own past.

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The book contains examples of:

• Above Good and Evil: Falco believes that good and evil are arbitrary terms and tries to persuade Amina to join him in his quest to become a human god-king in remarkably short intervals after he's tried to or actually done something horrible to her and her crew.
• Accidental Marriage: Amina and Raksh married in the middle of an all-out drunken bender. The next morning, she panics over having wed a demon, while Raksh is equal parts confused and intrigued by the mortal contract. Whatever its legal status, it's magically binding enough to link them indefinitely. Amina suspects it has something to do with their daughter's presence.
• Action Mom: By the time of the book, Amina has a ten-year-old daughter Marjana, the expertise of a seasoned adventurer, and the drive to keep her family safe from harm.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Amina married Raksh while they were both absolutely blitzed on the potent local date wine in the Maldives. She even dragged him to an unscrupulous cleric to convert him to Islam and barely remembers it even when he reminds her that it happened.
• All Myths Are True:
  • Amina knows from multiple unfortunate experiences that supernatural forces and entities are very real things. The myths may not be accurate, but they're founded in truth.
  • Scribe Jamal hints that his family has made a practice of deliberately sowing inaccuracies into stories of powerful artifacts so that it will be harder for people to find them.
  • During the conference with the peris, the Golden Fleece and the Apple of Samarkand are mentioned as real objects that have affected history.
• All-Powerful Bystander: The Peri are spirits with incredibly powerful magic, but they live in seclusion and forbid themselves from interfering with the mortal world. They're concerned with "Transgressions" where the mortal and magical realms interact, but don't consider the Moon of Saba to be worth their time.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Falco is utterly dismissive of the lives lost in the Crusades and the ones he's taken himself, writing it off as the inevitable course of human history.
• Ancient Order of Protectors: It turns out that Dunya and Asif are from a family that has long sequestered dangerous magical artifacts to protect humanity from them (and vice versa). More short-sighted members of the family unfortunately have a habit of selling off bits of the collection.
• And the Adventure Continues: The book ends with Amina and her companions preparing to explore the world once again, this time for the joy of adventure. In addition, Amina's bargain with the Peri requires her to deliver four more magical Transgressions to them.
• Anti-Villain: Salima just wants her granddaughter brought home safely, and if threatening Amina's entire family is what it takes to get her help, then so be it.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Amina has no romantic illusions about her profession. But she considers that rich people and nobility do far worse to entire societies than she could ever do to a few ships at sea, mainly because the rich and powerful don't see people like her as fully people at all. Salima's threat to kill her daughter and the governor of Aden wanting to brutally execute a handful of smugglers to make a point don't disabuse her of this feeling.
• Bad Guy Bar: Falco's former agent is found drinking at a ramshackle tavern that "all but announced it preferred gamblers and highwaymen to merchants and pigrims".
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: When Raksh enters the story, his behavior isn't evil so much as it is incredibly selfish. He feeds on ambition, but he'll straight-up consume people entirely if he sees a need to, and clearly has trouble understanding and remembering human feelings and morality.
• Brawn Hilda: Amina is unusually tall and muscular for a woman, a fact that made her feel awkward and out-of-place growing up (and which contributed her decision to revive her grandfather's trade: piracy). She gets even stronger after eating and drinking on the peris' island, which enables her to break her supernatural husband's nose when he pisses her off.
• Call-Forward: The other peris warn Khazyur that he's already gotten himself into hot water in his dealings with humans and that if he's not careful, it'll be the end of him.
• The Captain: Amina became famous as the captain or nakhudha of the Marawati, leading crew on grand adventures by virtue of extensive expertise, charisma, and force of arms.
• Captured Super-Entity:
  • The proof of Falco's sorcerous power is that he can magically dominate a marid, a titanic water spirit, and force it to do his bidding. The marid is very unhappy about this.
  • The Moon of Saba is said to hold the power of the lunar aspect Al-Dabaran. It turns out that Queen Bilqis imprisoned him within the Moon when she caught him spying on her through it, a fact that becomes instrumental in ending its threat.
• Churchgoing Villain: Amina's crew are outlaws and former pirates rather than villains, but most are quite devout, including observant Muslims, Christians, and Hindus. Amina is a lifelong practicing Muslim and takes her religious devotions very seriously, though she admits she's leaning pretty hard on the "All-Forgiving" aspect of God.
  I have not, in the entirety of my life, ever paid taxes. Or customs fees. Or fines of any sort (I do pay my zakat and give sadaqah, of course, for the Divine Authority is the only one I respect).
• Cold Iron: For supernatural threats, Amina carries a blade made of pure iron, inscribed with holy verses, and regularly blessed with zamzam water — it's not very sharp, but it doesn't need to be. She later upgrades to an allegedly celestial blade forged from Thunderbolt Iron.
• Commonality Connection: Dunya's wealthy grandmother appeals to Amina's maternal instinct to coax her into taking the case. Subverted when she then threatens Amina's daughter, stunning Amina with her callousness.
• Crossover Cameo: Khayzur the peri from The Daevabad Trilogy makes an appearance to rescue Amina and Raksh from the other peri.
• Crossover Cosmology: In addition to the truth behind various myths and legends, the various gods of the ages are implied to exist as well. Falco refers to Hercules as having been a real figure by his studies and Raksh refers to God as "the competition" (which scandalizes Amina, a devout Muslim).
• Cryptic Conversation: The best hint that Khayzur can give Amina about the sea monster problem is "living things like to be free" thanks to the sanction placed on him by his fellows.
• Dented Iron: Amina is powerfully built and stays in excellent condition, but now that she's in her forties, she's starting to slow down and has a bum knee that causes trouble more than once.
• Due to the Dead: Dalila insists on giving the slaughtered villagers on Socotra a proper Christian burial.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Amina is a capable warrior in her own right, but she gains a connection to the supernatural realm by drinking water from a magical tree on the Peri's island, granting mild Super-Strength and the ability to perceive magic.
• Evil Sorcerer: Falco has learned real magic from his occult investigations and is happy to enslave and sacrifice people for more power. He uses it to empower and control his minions and to dominate a marid.
• Experienced Protagonist: As a veteran sea captain, Amina is an old hand at sailing, leading crew, planning highly unusual operations, following leads, and winning fights. Salima hires her because she has the best chance of finding Dunya without getting the law involved.
• Faith–Heel Turn: Falco. He shows Amina a sash laden with pilgrim badges, having visited every holy site imaginable in an effort to experience God and an explanation for the state of the world. Finding no demonstrable evidence of the divine, he came to the conclusion that the old gods were better and desires to remake himself in their image.
• Famed In-Story: Stories of Amina's exploits as a pirate have spread across the seas, growing to outlandish magnitude — contrary to rumor, she isn't a sorceress. Her reputation can be a great help in recruiting crew from the wrong side of the law, but forces her to take great care to avoid the authorities.
• Faux Affably Evil: Falco can act charming and persuasive when it's the easiest way to get what he wants. When it isn't, the Mask of Sanity comes off and he starts torturing people to death.
• Framing Device: The story is framed as the scholar Jamal al-Hilli (formerly known as Dunya) recording Amina's account of her voyage, with occasional interludes of supporting documents.
• Friendly Pirate: Downplayed — Amina is the first to admit that her pirate crew plundered and killed, but they tried to minimize violence for both moral and pragmatic reasons. She's nervous about the pirate fleets of Socotra, who have no such compunctions and are powerful enough to defeat navies.
• Gilded Cage: Dunya doesn't want to go home because she would be forced into an Arranged Marriage that would give her every physical comfort but strip away all her freedom.
• Guardian Entity: After settling things with Salima in the ending, Amina is stopped on the way out of the house and handed a huge bag full of Dunya's notes and reference books by a djinni that watches over the al-Hilli home.
• Hot Men at Work: When she first gets back to her ship, Amina is a bit distracted by a bunch of fit young sailors stripping down to their shorts to work. Her friends tease her about being on the hunt for Husband #5.
• Human-Demon Hybrid: The father of Amina's daughter Marjana is Raksh, a "spirit of discord". She doesn't know this and shows no signs of her supernatural heritage, but Amina is on guard for any way it might reveal itself or bring danger to Marjana.
• Humans Are Special: Humans are short-lived and physically fragile compared to the various supernatural beings Amina gets entangled with, but one of them explains that their magic is to compensate for a quality that they lack and which humans have in abundance—ingenuity. Human inventiveness is why the peris and the very human al-Hilli family are so afraid of humans getting their hands on things that give them magical abilities, because a human can think of ways to abuse it that most magical beings couldn't conceive of.
• Humanshifting: Raksh's true form is a humanoid demon with tusks, mottled skin, and fleshy hair, but he can freely switch to a human form that looks broadly similar but without the supernatural features. The one time the disguise slips, it's when he passes out drunk.
• I Owe You My Life: After Amina frees the Marid from Falco's magical bindings, it shows up again to rescue her at a vital moment. A golden thread of magic links them in the interim, suggesting that the debt has some supernatural significance.
• Jerkass Gods: The real origin of the Moon of Saba. Bilqis rejected al-Dabaran's advances so he decided to spy on her while she was bathing and she trapped him for the offense. Amina confesses herself, in fact, not surprised by this—just disappointed that even powerful cosmic entities are as gross as human men. She calls him a "perverted excuse for a planet" when she meets him in the flesh.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: One reason Amina did live long enough to retire is because she'll surrender in an unwinnable fight and look for another way to retake the upper hand.
• It's All My Fault: Guilt over Asif's demise drove Amina into retirement. Some time after she brought the demon Raksh onboard, Asif made a deal with him that went wrong, costing Asif his life and soul. She's drastically overestimating her responsibility for the tragedy, but it takes her ten years to talk about her guilt with her friends... and finds out that each and every one of them thinks that they're really the one at fault for some reason or another.
• Knockout Gas: A trivial feat for a poisoner of Dalila's calibre, most prominently some doctored hashish that harmlessly puts smokers to sleep within seconds.
• Language Drift: To the people of 1100s Yemen, from Europe is a "Frank", regardless of whether they're from anywhere near modern France. Falco's history implies that his family is from England.
• Lemony Narrator: Amina occasionally interrupts her narrative to scold Jamal when she thinks he's digressing or trying to Bowdlerise the more saucy aspects (or language) of her adventures.
• Leonine Contract: Amina has to make a deal with the Peri in order to avoid being killed for trespassing on their magical island, requiring her to deliver them five magical items that they wish removed from the mortal world.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • The one religious edict that Amina never, ever broke was sex out of wedlock—by making liberal use of divorce to get rid of men she'd grown tired of.
  • The peris employ some convoluted logic to justify why some particular course of action falls under the purview of "non-interference." Like letting a mortal visitor fall to their death. Not the peris' fault they were standing on a temporarily-solid cloud.
• Lost at Sea: Amina considers this the worst possible fate for a sailor, forcing them to choose between a horrible, near-hopeless ordeal and letting go. Her Darkest Hour is when Falco throws her overboard, but she snags some debris and somehow survives for over a week before floating to an island.
• Magic Mirror: The Moon of Saba, believed to be a precious jewel, is actually a silver washbasin that used to belong to Queen Bilqis. People can gain the power of the lunar spirit confined there by looking into its waters during a special ritual.
• Master Poisoner: Dalila is infamous as the "Mistress of Poisons", an expert in everything from knockout drugs to horrific acids. Amina notes that while she can kill someone in a fight, Dalila can strike down a victim from the next city over.
• Mundanger: Salima has no supernatural powers, but she can use her wealth, position, and connections to have Amina's entire family killed without facing a single consequence for it—and it's a lot harder to fight that than an evil sorcerer and a handful of minions.
• Mystical Cave: The Moon of Saba is rumoured to be hidden in the caves of Socotra, a place of great treasure, magic, and danger. A bronze door inside leads to a monster-infested cavern that exists in between the physical and spirit worlds, though Amina isn't sure afterwards how much of her experiences there were even real.
• The Navigator: Of Amina's crew, Majed isn't much use in a fight, but is the uncontested expert in the scholarship and practice of navigation, safely leading ships on routes that no sane captain would have tried.
• Non-Action Guy: For a being of supernatural powers, so ageless that the true name for his kind has been forgotten, Raksh is pretty wimpy. He reminds Amina several times that he is not a warrior. He gets himself a mace for the final confrontation with Falco's crew, but his attempt to use it consists of a badly-aimed throw that almost hits Amina.
• No One Could Survive That!: Amina, Tinbu, Majed, and Dalila all agree that there is no way Amina's horrible last husband, Raksh, could possibly survive what they did to him: burying him alive below the tideline on a beach. It did weaken him for a long time, but he found a way out. And he's really pissed about it.
• Number Two: As Amina's first mate, Tinbu knows the ship, its maintenance, and its operation inside and out. She trusts him to act as captain in her absence, though he's very relieved to relinquish the leadership back to her upon her return.
• Ocean Awe: Decades at sea haven't diminished the awe Amina feels for the ocean as a natural wonder and a place of adventure. She finds that prayer has a special poignancy there, since sailing is itself an act of faith for her.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Salima offers Amina a vast fortune to find her kidnapped granddaughter... and threatens to have her entire family killed if she doesn't accept.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Crafty Dalila, the Mistress of Poisons, is an alias. She even refuses to reveal her true name to Amina, her closest friend, saying that "names are for tombstones".
• Our Demons Are Different: Raksh insists that "demon" is an erroneous human term for spirits of discord like him and points out several parts of human life that are full of discord without being unwanted (such as having a child). He feeds on an enables ambition, not evil — though he himself disregards mortal morality and isn't beyond snacking on the occasional human heart if he's desperate.
• Pirates:
  • Amina and her crew are, by and large, opportunists and smugglers who hit rich targets and scuttle off to sell their takings—the oddballs among their crew (particularly Amina herself) helped sow their legend.
  • The pirates of Socotra are so fearsome that Amina would rather never encounter them—unlike her independent little ship, there are enough pirates on the island that they can tangle with national navies and even have a governing council.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "You have taken up enough of my time", right before Amina stabs Falco through the heart.
• Pronoun Trouble: At one point, Amina stops the story to ask Jamal how she should refer to a certain person, as that person is Jamal before he transitioned. Jamal says it's fine to call him Dunya and use female pronouns, as everyone, including himself, honestly believed those to be correct at the time, and he wants the account to be as accurate as possible.
• Putting the Band Back Together: Amina's old crew broke up after Asif's death ten years ago. On the way to rescue Dunya, she recruits her three surviving True Companions from the different cities they've settled in, much to their fond exasperation at being unexpectedly uprooted. To their great displeasure, Raksh finds them.
• Recovered Addict: Amina swore off alcohol after quitting piracy, but it still tests her self-control to be around booze, especially in situations where anyone would need a drink.
• Recruiting the Criminal: Salima hires Amina, a notorious outlaw, rather than use her extensive political connections because Amina is both capable and discreet — it would undermine the family reputation and Dunya's marriage prospects if Dunya were publicly known to have been in the custody of a foreign mercenary.
• Refused Reunion: It turns out that Dunya is desperate to escape an Arranged Marriage and Gilded Cage, forcing Amina to question the mission to return her to Salima. Amina's principles win out; she helps Dunya escape and start a new life, but Dunya gets her off the hook with a letter explaining Amina's extraordinary efforts to keep her safe.
• The Reveal: Amina and her old friends make oblique, mournful references to the fate that befell their late crewmate Asif al-Hilli, and how Amina's demon ex-husband was involved. Asif made a deal with Raskh, but the pact hadn't been completed when a sickness swept the crew. Because of that, Asif died, but came back as a ghoul and killed several people. Not only that, when Amina and the others were forced to destroy him, his soul was destroyed as well.
• Reverse the Polarity: In the final confrontation with Falco, Dunya performs the magic ritual in reverse so that rather than Falco taking possession of al-Dabaran, al-Dabaran takes control of Falco's body.
• Ridiculous Counter-Request: A deal with Raksh went very sour this way. Asif asked him for legendary fame and fortune far beyond his power to provide, so he sarcastically asked for Asif's soul in payment. Asif agreed; Magically Binding Contracts don't recognize sarcasm; and the impossible deal ultimately destroyed Asif's soul.
  Raksh: It was a jest. Then he said yes.
• The Runaway: According to Salima's story, Falco somehow kidnapped Dunya with no disturbance, struggle, or subsequent ransom demand. Sure enough, she left with him to escape an unacceptable marriage and pursue her dreams of occult scholarship, only to learn too late how much of a monster he is. We also later learn that Dunya is trans and his family would not be supportive. He changes his gender presentation, renames himself, and becomes the scribe who is recording the story.
• Running Gag: Amina gets Falco Palamenestra's last name wrong every time she tries to say it. She only says it correctly in the confrontation where she kills him.
• Sea Monster: As primordial spirits of water, the marid get pretty big. Amina sees one in the form of a tentacular sea scorpion-thing that can easily wear a full-sized ship as a hat. It easily defeats her ship, but later does her a vital favour when she frees it from Falco.
• Start of Darkness: Falco's descent into villainy began with the Crusades when his father bankrupted the family to go fight in it, and the Christian victory resulted in the same sort of petty political squabbling that was everywhere else. With the Church's arbitration of morality turning out to be pointless and hypocritical, Falco decided he wasn't going to bother with morality himself either.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Referenced — Amina confidently takes a drink from Dalila despite their rocky reunion, knowing that if a Master Poisoner like Delila wanted to drug her, she would have done it more elegantly.
• Team Pet: Payasam is an abject failure of a ship's cat, incapable of hunting mice or even walking straight while at sea. Nonetheless, everyone but Amina finds it endearing.
• Third-Party Deal Breaker: When she becomes an Empowered Badass Normal, Amina can perceive and physically sever the magical bonds between Falco and his minions, revoking the powers he granted them. One of them is horrified — he'd traded his cousin's life for those powers.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Magnun's dagger. When Amina questions its status as a "celestial blade," he admits it's just an impressive-sounding way to say that it was forged from an iron meteorite, but it's very effective against supernatural threats.
• The Time of Myths: Falco is obsessed with the legendary age when gods, spirits, and heroes worked openly in the world. He covets the Moon of Saba as a source of power from that age: an artifact by which an ancient Benevolent Mage Ruler could wield the power and knowledge of a lunar aspect.
• To Be Lawful or Good: For a very loose definition of "lawful", but when Dunya explains exactly why she ran away from home, Amina sympathizes completely—but still fully intends to return her to Salima for the safety of her own family. She eventually reneges. A letter from Dunya herself convinces Salima to call off the death threat, but she withholds the rest of the promised pay.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: Because the Moon of Saba is linked to a lunar spirit, a lunar eclipse is an appropriate liminal time for the ritual to claim its power. This imposes an urgent Celestial Deadline for Amina to stop Falco.
• Touch the Intangible: When she becomes an Empowered Badass Normal, Amina gains the unique ability to perceive magical contracts as cords connecting the people in the pact. This lets her handle those cords as if they were physical objects... and cut them.
• Treasure Map: The town near where Amina retired did a brisk trade in allegedly ancient maps to forgotten treasures in the region. Amina knows a few ways to produce a convincing forgery and recommends fleeing in the opposite direction you send your treasure hunters.
• True Companions: Having relied on each other for years as pirates, Amina, Dalila, Tinbu, and Majed have absolute faith in each other. Amina unhesitatingly derails her plans when Tinbu needs help, even though she hasn't seen him in ten years, and the others show equal dedication to her.
• Villainous Gold Tooth: Discussed. When Salima tries to link Amina's gold tooth to the stories of a pirate queen with a mouthful of golden fangs, Amina mocks her fixation on a very common dental procedure.
• Visionary Villain: Subverted. Falco talks a big game about bringing back the glories of The Time of Myths, ushering the world into a new era of peace and prosperity, but is just a vicious megalomaniac.
• Wanted a Gender-Conforming Child: When Amina finally catches up to her and tries to convince her that marrying a rich husband is way better than the mess she's gotten herself into, Dunya explains that she can't even see herself as a woman, much less a wife, and that attempting to explain this to her grandmother did not go well at all. In her final conversation with Salima, Amina strongly suggests that Salima buck her ideas up if she ever wants to see her grandchild again.

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