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The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
3/5. Lady pirate on the ancient Indian Ocean comes out of retirement for one last job, also her last husband may not be entirely human.
Lukewarm on this one. I know I’m in the minority here, but there is just something about Chakraborty’s writing that sucks the sparkly essence of interesting things away. Here, I wanted piracy, lady swashbuckling, lots of salty ocean love, and some chewy historical sailing stuff. Nope, none of that. I think maybe a swash was buckled once if I’m being generous, and if this allegedly great sea captain actually thought about the (all-consuming, to my knowledge) mechanics of sailing her ship even once, I missed it.
Also, Chakraborty had the poor judgment, in my view, to leave not only one note telling us how much research she did to make this historically accurate, but two! I mean okay, you do you, but I gotta say all the linguistic anachronisms and modern modes of thought in this book would not have bothered me if she didn’t make such a point of all the hundreds and hundreds of books she read for research. Do your research if it makes you happy, but you still have your historical pirate using very specific 2010’s internet speak and separately referring to a man as “so hot,” so maybe next time do the research and shut up about it so you don’t make people think your book is something it’s not?
There’s some nice made family stuff here, and complications with her daughter’s origins, and also an adventuring trans teenager. But this is setting up a series that I have little to no interest in following.
Content notes: Lots of violence, some body horror, threat of rape, some consent stuff as the result of magical influence
3/5. Lady pirate on the ancient Indian Ocean comes out of retirement for one last job, also her last husband may not be entirely human.
Lukewarm on this one. I know I’m in the minority here, but there is just something about Chakraborty’s writing that sucks the sparkly essence of interesting things away. Here, I wanted piracy, lady swashbuckling, lots of salty ocean love, and some chewy historical sailing stuff. Nope, none of that. I think maybe a swash was buckled once if I’m being generous, and if this allegedly great sea captain actually thought about the (all-consuming, to my knowledge) mechanics of sailing her ship even once, I missed it.
Also, Chakraborty had the poor judgment, in my view, to leave not only one note telling us how much research she did to make this historically accurate, but two! I mean okay, you do you, but I gotta say all the linguistic anachronisms and modern modes of thought in this book would not have bothered me if she didn’t make such a point of all the hundreds and hundreds of books she read for research. Do your research if it makes you happy, but you still have your historical pirate using very specific 2010’s internet speak and separately referring to a man as “so hot,” so maybe next time do the research and shut up about it so you don’t make people think your book is something it’s not?
There’s some nice made family stuff here, and complications with her daughter’s origins, and also an adventuring trans teenager. But this is setting up a series that I have little to no interest in following.
Content notes: Lots of violence, some body horror, threat of rape, some consent stuff as the result of magical influence
