Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi Book Review
& the "Mandatory Un-retirement" Trope in Historical Fantasy
Earlier this month, I chose The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi in my page-by-page tiebreaker round (which you can read in the comments of that post at this link) mainly because of the voice, which promised to reveal a female perspective on pirate tales typically recorded in history by men.
This book review has several parts:
The Contradictions in Historical Fantasy
Rich World Building
The Mandatory Un-retirement Trope (where I found a surprising number of parallels between this book and Mission Impossible III 😂).
Overall, I had fun with this light adventure read. The visual descriptions of the battles captured my imagination, and I would love to see these wild sea creatures and explosions play out on a big screen!
I agree with author
from the SubStack that:I like this more as a movie than a series.
The reason I say that is because it would be hard to break this story down into super-compelling episodes. The story shape is such that the slower build pays off in a wild ending, which tends to be more satisfying to watch in movie form.
I appreciated all the key points of this book in its pitch:
Diverse cast
Setting on the coasts of the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean
Female pirate characters too (Look, I’ve been down with this ever since we saw Elizabeth Swan go rogue in Pirates of the Caribbean, and not to mention Penelope Cruz 🤩):
I noticed in reading the widely differing reviews of this book that clearly, the buzzwords used to market it were aimed at YA readers. However, the book was released as an “Adult Fantasy,” even though the voice doesn’t come across as that mature like you’d expect to find in most Adult Fantasy. That’s where a marketing mismatch definitely took place and turned some readers off.
To answer what I loved and wasn’t so much for me though, we have to address something else first:
Historical fantasy is an oxymoron, ok?
I could talk about Historical Fantasy all day because it’s one of my favorite genres, but for now, I’ll refer you to this in-depth blog on “Genre Talk: Historical Fantasy” with its full list of pros and cons here.
Because the genre itself is a contradiction, there will be lots of controversial opinions about it, inevitably. Historical Fantasy literally means that you’re starting with the real world at some point in history, and then bending it with some amount of magic that will minutely or massively change that world and everyone in it (which means it’s no longer historically accurate). That’s so much fun, when done well.
But when it’s not marketed to the right audience or twisted beyond the bounds of historical fantasy into an epic high fantasy, then readers go:
Now that we’ve addressed the Historical Fantasy elephant in the room, the question is:
Just where on the spectrum of historical vs. fantasy does this book fall?
Well I’m going to say 70% Fantasy with about 30% Historical references.
True places ✅
References to wars that actually happened ✅
Real legends & gods mentioned ✅
…And everything else beyond that starts falling into the fantasy blender and comes out the other side looking weird if you’re a diehard historian.
It’s what I’d call “playfully historical” — meaning not written for historians, or for people who want more representation of ancient and traditional values in these times and places. As in, I wouldn’t use this book to study the actual history of these places, though some big world events are alluded to (i.e. crusades and various massacres).
That means while you have incredibly detailed and amazing descriptions of the settings that make you see the place, you also get this modern voice of a retired pirate captain woman who likes to say “fuck” a lot, even though this is in the 12th century when no one had ever used that word before. I love a well-placed “fuck” now and then, I really do, but then I’d also like it to fully commit to that modern edge and maybe not try to be historical? But then again, that’s just me. You get contradictions like this in Historical Fantasy because of the nature of the genre. I still enjoyed the ride.
🏴☠️The Best Bits: World Building
Pages 72 to 74:
Aden's harbor was gentle and the expanse of azure water a sailors dream, dear of the coral and shoals that make most of the ports north of here so deadly was dotted with about twenty ships, most that carry trade goods to the East African and Indian coasts. A few more boats had been dragged onto the narrow beach for repairs, the muddy flats crowded with sweating laborers tightening hull stitches, making rope, and mixing sealant. The smell of coir and pitch combined with the salty breeze and reek of fish guts on the humid air to make a smell only a sailor could love. New mansions and promenades glistened in the distant hills, where their wealthy inhabitants could enjoy stunning sea vistas and pleasant breezes, but Aden's newest construction boom appeared to have missed its poor: the palm frond huts on the sweltering beach – huts I spent a not-insignificant portion of my childhood in – looked as miserable as ever.
I fanned my face with the end of my turban as we made our way through a maze of wooden hulls, shark-oil-filled barrels, carpentry tools, lengths of rope, and flapping sails. The hot sand crunched beneath my thin sandals, and I was drenched with sweat in moments. Longing to spy my Marawati and plunge into the ocean, I stopped in the shade of a large sunbug framed by stilts. Still, no one had bothered us God, give us a couple tins and we could have boarded a ship claiming to be delivering food to hungry husbands and stolen it.
But I did not want any stolen ship, I wanted my stolen ship. I shaded my eyes, the sun's glare upon the water fierce, and scanned the boats drifting in the bay.
"Do you see it?" Dalila asked.
"No. Though knowing Tinbu, she is likely nigh unrecognizable.”
…[then] there, swaying in the gentle waves like a comely dancer, was my Marawati.
I praised God under my breath, my soul eased at the sight of my first love, at the ship I'd have cast all my ex-husbands overboard to save. She was a true beauty, India-made with a narrow hull of the finest dark teak.
Her name was original, though I've little idea what it means; my grandfather was as cagey about the Marawati's name as he was regarding the no doubt illegal way he obtained her. She was not overly large, but with a full complement of oarsmen and a deft hand controlling the vast sails and two rudders, she was one of the swiftest vessels on the sea, capable of fleeing far bigger warships.
Not that she looked like it at that moment. The oars and the rails that held them were nowhere to be seen, the decked platforms where we launched weapons were dismantled, and the rudder and stern ornaments had been changed. The hull and masts had been painted an ugly yellow-tinged green that looked like it needed to be refreshed twenty years ago, and between the fraying nets and rusty chains, the Marawati looked less like a speedy smuggling vessel and more like a fishing boat used to coast along the shore.
I loved these passages where I could feel her excitement at being reunited with her ship and feel the atmosphere of the ancient Yemen coast right there with her.
However, let’s dive into the wilder fantasy elements that start exploding from about halfway through the novel to its end. To appreciate all this within the scope of this story’s shape, I’m going to break down the overall story to show you what works and where it goes wild in context of its main trope:
The Mandatory Un-retirement Trope
********************************************spoilers ahead!*****************************************
TVTropes.org is the best for genre break downs, and if you’re curious about other famous stories that fall under this un-retirement umbrella, check it out here. The point is that you get the bad-ass hero who “just wants to live a quiet and normal life” after all their adventures, and yet, others know they are too good at what they do. Thus, they get dragged back into another mess anyway.
For our example, I’m going to use a modern reference point of Mission Impossible III, a movie I loved in which our star Ethan Hunt tries to settle down after marrying a “normal” girl who has no idea what he really did for a living.
🙏1. Help: We’ve got a problem only you can solve.
You guessed it; we’ve got a variation of the “chosen one” trope nested in here. Someone comes to drag the hero out of retirement because they’re that desperate, and our hero is that amazing and irreplaceable.
In Mission Impossible, the job is a secret operation to rescue one of Ethan’s favorite students who was taken hostage by the new formidable foe, an arms dealer connected to all kinds of other shady shit. As per usual, he’s promised the job should be easy for him to complete and return back to his naive fiancé (who thinks he has a boring desk job at the Virginia DOT) before she ever learns anything.
In “The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi” the job is rescuing the kidnapped teen grand-daughter (Dunya) of a super-rich woman (Salima) who turns out to be the mother of Asif, an old crew member of Amina’s who died on her watch as captain of her ship. Rather than asking nicely, Salima blackmails Amina by threatening to reveal her new hiding place to all of Amina’s enemies so that they can come and kill Amina and her 10-year-old daughter Marjana.
Both approaches work because they lean on the Main Character’s innate feelings of responsibility for protecting those they’d promised to mentor, plus the fact that their new and peaceful lives are secretly boring the hell out of them.
🧐SIDE NOTE: Ever notice how these all-powerful retirees can never seem to find a place to hide out where no one will actually find them? They have so much knowledge about how to disappear, but it’s almost as if they want to be found. As if upon retiring, they’ve forgotten how blackmail works, and they expect everyone to forget all about them…
👯2. Let’s get the gang back together!
In Mission Impossible, the reunion part is only 1 to 2 scenes and smoothed together pretty quickly to move us toward hunting down the kidnapped agent quickly. That’s because Ethan doesn’t need to convince his people to come back and join him; they’re eager to go. Such are the benefits of working for a larger black ops program without having to manage everything as a freelancer.
In the Adventures of Amina, this part of the book drags on to take up the whole first half of the book because some of her old crew members still have grudges against her AND the one supervising her ship gets himself arrested right before she has a chance to say hi at the harbor. Naturally, this means cue the classic prison breakout scene as part of the reunion and new crew mate recruiting.
These parts of the stories are always fun, but in Amina’s tale, it’s a bit slow because a lot of these interactions force readers to imagine what they were all like back in their younger glory days rather than actually being able to “see it onscreen” ourselves.
😳3. Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought.
In Mission Impossible, they go through with the rescue operation, they get the agent Lindsey to safety, but at the last minute while fleeing, an implanted chip in her head detonates and kills her. Oops, not the easiest job after all (because if it was, then we wouldn’t have a full-length movie).
In Amina, her crew goes after a lead and catches an informant who starts to snitch on their villain, his former employer…until 💥he dies choking on a whole bag of coins that was magically stuffed into his throat as punishment for “treason.” Suddenly, Amina realizes her villain is no ordinary pedophile and megalomaniac but a sorcerer, and she doesn’t have any magic to wield in her arsenal against him. Plus, upon confronting the grandmother who hired her again, Amina learns that (unsurprisingly) the grandmother lied…concealing that her granddaughter ran away willingly with the sorcerer to chase down a magical Moon of Saba that can help you basically rule the world. But hey, no pressure on her head if she fails other than the entire world will be doomed.
🏃♀️💨4. The Chase (with rising stakes)
In Mission Impossible, Ethan goes on an unofficial mission of his own to capture the bad guy Davian, gets him, but then loses him again when the villain’s assistants show up in an ambush and free him. Then Davian sets out on his promise to “kill everyone Ethan cares about” while they pursue him with few clues to go on.
In the Adventures of Amina, she finally gets her crew to the mysterious island filled with pirates who are apparently more dangerous than her own gang and hopes that neither the rival pirates, nor the sea monsters lurking there, nor the bad tides will kill them before they rescue the missing girl Dunya.
🌏💥🌍5. Worlds collide: Personal vs. Professional
Mission Impossible continues with Davian kidnapping Ethan’s fiancée Julia and threatening to kill her if Ethan doesn’t get the secret information he wants. What a way to learn what your boyfriend really does for a living. Thanks for failing retirement, Ethan.🤨
In Adventures of Amina, she lands on the island and runs into her last ex-husband, who is unfortunately alive despite her attempt to drown him 10 years ago…because he’s a demon/“spirit of chaos” supernatural creature who shape shifts into human form when he feels like it. Her ex doesn’t know Amina gave birth to his child, which she plans on never telling him, though he’s suspicious. Worse still, he admits he’s running from their enemy who’s really powerful.
At this point in both stories:
The Mission Impossible twist is predictable, but it works well to jump up the stakes. Ethan is paying the price for keeping important things secret from Julia, which is a consequence readers want to see and expect.
Amina’s story gets outright hilarious and unpredictable at this juncture. I’m so glad the demon husband didn’t die! Nobody saw this twist coming, and it pisses everyone off exceedingly, especially since now she has to admit to her crew that he was a demon and she’d been pretending he was human years ago…plus, we get backstory on that night she got WAY too drunk in the Maldives and married him before learning he was a demon the next morning, when he was too hung over to hide it 🤣😂 Honestly, that could just be a whole other book for me. This was my favorite part of the tale. At this part I realized it’s actually a comedy-adventure.
☠️6. “But I thought you died!”
In Mission Impossible, this is the part where Ethan faces his worst fear, seeing Julia with a gun to her head while the shooter demands that Ethan give him the real secret files (codename: Rabbit’s foot). Ethan admits truthfully that he gave it to them already, and despite trying to reason with them, they shoot Julia. However…it’s then revealed that it wasn’t actually Julia they shot but someone else with a mask on to look like Julia. They just wanted for Ethan to confirm that they had the right files. Ethan faces off with the IMF traitor who comes in and reveals the secret plot to start a war using these files, and then Ethan finally figures out where the real Julia actually is.
In Amina’s tale, she gets captured by the big bad Palamenestra, drugged, and then freed, and then her and the gang are chased to her ship. Despite that, her ship is caught in the tentacles of a massive sea beast that’s half-octopus and half scorpion and about as big as a small island. Plus, this beast is being controlled by the sorcerer (because of course it is). The sorcerer fights her, stabs her with her own sword, and then gets thrown off her own ship to drown. Yet she survives and makes it to an enchanted desert island where her estranged husband also washed ashore because why not? And other magical shenanigans ensue to get them back to the island where all the action is.
I loved the excitement in both parts of these stories, and they both managed to make you think, “ok, maybe this is really the end,” which always makes for a great cliffhanger.
🚨🆕🤔7. Relying on a newbie to save the hero.
Mission Impossible has Ethan show Julia, a nurse with no bomb training nor gun skills, how to fire a gun and resuscitate him after he destroys the bomb-chip in his head by defibrillating himself. Yeah, how’s that for a first day on the job you never signed up for? But kudos to Julia; she fucking does it and saves the day (because Tom Cruise had more Mission Impossible movies to make, ok? We couldn’t kill him yet.)
Amina faces off with the sorcerer who has finally captured the magical object Moon of Saba and is trying to take over the world with it, but Amina is too late to do anything. While she faces the desperation of her failure, luckily the kidnapped teen Dunya who had never cast a spell before found a way to reverse the spell she was commanded to cast for the sorcerer so that he becomes a tool of the god within the Moon of Saba instead of mastering it…which sets the god free to destroy the magical object once and for all.
I love how both stories have this ironic twist because the original point of coming out of retirement was because “you were the only one who could save them” but actually, it’s up to you to “trust others at last” instead of thinking you have to save everyone all the time.
⚖️8. Make the final choice
The big final question is: Should you include the innocent in your dangerous world even if it risks their life?
I actually respect Ethan Hunt a bit more here because by the next Mission Impossible, he separates from Julia and fakes her death to protect her and stop anyone else from using her as leverage to get to him. That really hurt, but he loves her too much to endanger her. He realizes he can’t be with her AND keep her safe all the time.
Amina is a more static character whose biggest change was deciding to show her daughter her ship at last and introduce her girl to her pirate crew (but is she really going to take her sailing with her now on her next adventure? How is she going to keep her safe from all her enemies?) We have no clues here, but we do have the promise of a sequel.
Plus, Amina refuses to take the grand-daughter Dunya back to her grandmother because that would mean forcing the girl into an arranged marriage, and Dunya admits that she actually doesn’t identify as a girl at all and won’t marry anyone. Amina takes the teen onto her crew as a scribe, and amazingly, the grandmother accepted this decision but claimed to “remain an enemy of Amina’s”? That was confusing to me. Sounds like the grandmother is still going to keep blackmailing Amina and possibly threaten her family again? But that wasn’t clarified.
Amina also decided maybe it’s a good thing that her daughter’s demon father isn’t dead because she needs to know more about what he is and how to help her daughter control “powers” or bonds that could cause problems later? Thus, to keep him from learning about his daughter a bit longer, she throws her husband off her ship (chained to a makeshift raft) to postpone this important meeting (because there will be a sequel).
For another perspective, this review on the Books of Amber YouTube channel illustrates more reasons to love Amina al-Sirafi and mentions how it compares with the author’s other books:
Tune in for the upcoming book vote arriving next week!
If you read this book, tell me what you thought of it in the comments! Please do let me know how you feel about the Mandatory Un-retirement trope too 😁.