the adventures of amina al-sirafi, by shannon chakraborty

i received a copy of the adventures of amina al-sirafi from harper collins nz in exchange for an honest review.

star rating

★★★

the adventures of amina al-sirafi review

i was really excited when i first saw the announcement for the adventures of amina al-sirafi. a female pirate? with middle eastern mythology?? as a lover of heist books, i was really excited to see how this book was going to turn out.

i really liked how interesting the concept for this book is. amina is a retired pirate, who has a family and a life that she’s worked hard to build outside of being a pirate. and now she has to return for one last job. i enjoyed the internal struggle that amina battled with for majority of the book in regards to staying safe at home with her family, or chasing fortune.

admittedly, i did struggle a bit with liking the characters. i really loved amina, marjana, tinbu and dalila, but i kept getting suspicious of everyone else (which made it hard to like them). because of this, i lacked the emotional investment that i wanted. (obviously, there was some for those characters i liked, but i didn’t care what happened to the others).

i’ve already said it, but i’ll say it again. this book is set around the indian ocean, and has a lot of middle eastern folklore and mythology. it’s refreshing to see something different, and the positive muslim rep is truly outstanding.

the plot is a nice medium pace with fast paced action scenes. i was fairly enjoyable and not too difficult to keep up. i struggled with some of the folklore and mythology as the pacing was a little too fast for me to learn/remember everything. (i went back and reread the parts i needed to, so it wasn’t that big of a deal).

overall, this was a good book with lots of learning (re the middle eastern setting, mythology and customs). i really enjoyed being thrown out of my “comfort zone” and into a world i know little about. i think my biggest struggle is that i don’t read much adult fantasy (primarily ya fantasy), which led to me not liking the characters as much.

buy your copy now!

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