Red alert people, this is not a drill. The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is a book about:

• A woman in her 40s with a bad knee
• Who is also a pirate queen
• Who is also Muslim and plying the seas of the Indian Ocean
• Who lives during the Medieval Period
• Who is also a mother who struggles with parenting and pirating
• And who has built a found family without fully realizing it
• And who becomes involved in the hunt for a magical talisman

If you are into that kind of thing, and who isn’t, then fly, my pretties, fly! It’s a long book, but goes fast. See you at the end. Have fun.

If any readers remain, then allow me to share a longer description of the premise:

Amina has retired from being the nakhuda (captain) of the Marawati so that she can raise her beloved daughter, Marjana. Her retirement is broken when she’s approached by a wealthy woman who begs Amina to rescue her granddaughter, Dunya. Amina soon realizes that the situation is more complicated, more dangerous, and considerably more supernatural than she had been led to believe, but she also realizes that she can’t back out of her assignment. So she gathers the remnants of her former crew and sallies forth to rescue Dunya, defeat an evil Frank, fight off a scorpion/kraken hybrid sea monster, and save the world.

The book is narrated by Amina, and her voice is just perfection – a little bit snarky, a little bit hopeful, a little bit tired. She is smart, brave, and tough but like all of us in her age range she also sounds like she could use a good nap. She is flawed and conflicted, stubborn and pragmatic, and blessed with the contradictory combination of good survival instincts and a tendency to act on impulse, a combination that leads to some truly amazing action sequences that span heists, jailbreaks, and battles on land and sea with human and supernatural opponents.

Throughout the story, Amina wrestles with her urge to protect her young daughter along with her own desire to return to the seas, alongside her desire to raise her child to be fearless. These issues of identity and the tug-of-war between needing to protect our children and needing to give them their freedom to grow were issues I very much related to:

“I’m not sure I ever stopped being a nakhudha,” I finally replied. “Our hearts may be spoken for by those with sweet eyes, little smiles, and so very many needs, but that does not mean that which makes us us is gone. And I hope . . . part of me hopes anyway that in seeing me do this, Marjana knows more is possible. I would not want her to believe that because she was born a girl, she cannot dream.”

This is such a beautifully written book, rich in world-building and culture. I could fill this review with quotes from it, be they funny…

The gang’s all back together . . . we should rob something!

…or full of determination and grit:

A woman can lower her gaze only so often without tripping over her feet.

Or poetic:

After all, we build our homes upon the ruins of lost cities and sail our ships over the drowned palaces of forgotten kings.

Amina both regrets and misses her past, and this push-pull adds internal tension and melancholy. In a plot filled with external sources of tension (such as the aforementioned scorpion-tentacle monster) it’s the internal conflict Amina feels about her past as well as her relationships with her biological and found family that both ground and drive the story. The supporting characters are all interesting people who are worthy of their own novels. They include people who practice different religions as well as people with a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities and expressions. They also include some true masters of sarcasm and snark, providing plenty of humor.

The book reads like both a prequel and a sequel. It reads like a sequel in the sense that it’s not an origin story – Amina is already a legend. She already had the whole pirating career and fully intended to spend the rest of her life trying to fix her leaky roof. Her story is full of noodle incidents (adventures that are alluded to but not described). At the same time, it reads like a prequel because we just KNOW that now that the gang is back together they will go on to further adventures, ones which I fervently hope will be described in print as soon as possible. I adored every part of this story – the stakes, the world-building, the language, the characters, and the action. I can’t wait to read more of it.