Synopsis
Amina al-Sirafi thinks she’s struck gold. Tasked with hunting down arcane artifacts for the council of immortal peris, she can savor the occasional rollicking adventure on the high seas with her cherished criminal companions while still returning home to raise her beloved daughter, Marjana. But when Raksh, the spirit of discord with whom she is reluctantly wed, provokes the council’s wrath, Amina is charged with a seemingly impossible quest: steal a spindle capable of rewriting fate from a mysterious sorceress on an island no one can escape.
Forced to leave Marjana—who is increasingly frustrated at being peddled what are clearly lies about her mother’s life and her own past—Amina finds her mission almost immediately thrown into peril. But deadly storms, an erratic poison mistress, and old enemies are the least of her worries. For the peris’ story is unraveling, hinting at a far deadlier game whose rules Amina must swiftly puzzle out. A game that sets her against an adversary more cunning and powerful than she has ever faced.
A game that not everyone on her crew wants her to win.
Review
“All grief transforms, it is a boundary, and when one is cruelly transported into that new land of the bereft, they are forever changed. But this. This.”
I only read book 1 in January, so my wait was not very long before I could return to the stunning world created by Shannon Chakraborty. And despite my wait being not as long as compared to everyone who read book 1 when it came out, I had missed how atmospheric and vivid Shannon’s writing is. It only took a couple of chapters for me to find comfort in my favourite pirate crew and within such a short while, they even went to India and had an Uncharted/ Indiana Jones style adventure. I said it in my book 1 review and I’ll say it again: Shannon Chakraborty is a genius and she does not need many pages to captivate the reader and bring one into her world. Chapter 9 in particular was just absolute cinema.
It is very enjoyable to be back with Amina. She’s a fantastic older protagonist (who I adore as a general rule) and it’s even more entertaining to follow them when they’ve to deal with their parental duties in addition to running off on a swashbuckling adventure to save the world. This book also gets way darker than the first. It is also an adventure to retrieve a mystical artifact from an unknown island in the Persian sea but the challenges and implications are way higher.
Once again, Shannon’s care to accurately and lovingly represent a lot of the real world and historical facts into the tale shines through. The way the land, and the art of embroidery itself becoming an active character in telling the story and aid and hinder Amina’s journey is amazing. What mastery of the craft to make the reader realize that while the finished product of embroidery is an inanimate object, the art behind it is a living, evolving practice of human creativity and has a history and personality. Just sheer genius. Another thing that needs to be highlighted are the interludes in this book. Some people might not enjoy them a lot, but I love them. As noted by the narrator, this tale is not just Amina’s and the interludes add so much depth and meaning to not just the actual plot but also the themes the story revolves around. I was truly moved more by the pain in the interludes than the ones faced by our main character. Rarely do I get to see the villain or more appropriately the antagonist be fleshed out so richly.
While there is so much to love about this book, it doesn’t reach the lofty highs of book 1 for me due to a couple of stumbling blocks. Firstly, because of the plot structure, we don’t get to spend a lot of time with my favourite side characters from book 1. One of the side characters from the pirate crew is expanded upon majorly but it comes at the cost of absence of all others. And there is a big plot thread revolving around the miscommunication trope and reading about that in older characters- seasoned veterans of a successful pirate crew even is not enjoyable. Secondly, the pacing is not very even. We get action going up and down and changing very well in the first half of the book but then there is a huge lull in the second half of the book.
Overall, this was still a solid outing for me. And especially with that ending, I cannot wait for book 3 of Amina.
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