Hugo Nominee Review: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

Hugo Nominee Review: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

by Rich Horton

In my series of Hugo Best Novel nominee reviews I'm dividing the authors into two camps: one is veteran writers with boatloads of Hugos and Hugo nominations already (Ann Leckie, Martha Wells, John Scalzi.) The other is new writers with no Hugos. Two of these writers obviously fit the category -- Emily Tesh and Vajra Chandrasekera -- in that they were nominated for their first novel. (Though Tesh has a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.) But S. A. Chakraborty (as she bylined her first novels) is kind of in-between -- The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is her fourth novel, and she even has a Hugo nomination, in the Best Series category, for her first three novels, The Daevabad Trilogy. (For what it's worth, I really like that cover image, by Ivan Belikov.)

(Interestingly, all three of these "young" writers are past their twenties (or appear to be -- I don't know how old Tesh is, but she does say, in an interview I found, that she "taught Latin for many years", so I'm guessing she's over 30.) I think a lot of recent "new" writers have come to novels after a long time doing other work. Possibly that's one reason their first novels get award nominations -- they may be "new" writers but they have plenty of other experience. That said, best guess is all of this "young" triad are 45 or under, while all of the "old" triad in are in their mid to late 50s. Scalzi and Leckie, however, were in their 30s and 40s when their first novels appeared (and got Hugo nominations!) so this isn't a completely new trend. But all of this is just observation, unimportant to evaluating their work.)

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is the first in what appears to be destined to be a longish series. The first book resolves most of the key issues it raises -- and it doesn't cheat the reader in that sense -- but it sets the stage for what could be several further volumes. I'm guessing the collective title will still be The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, and I wonder if later editions of the novel will get a subtitle, much like Star Wars: A New Hope.

Amina al-Sirafi is a pirate in a fantastical 12th Century. She lives on the coast of the Arabian Sea (or so I think), and the action of the novel ranges from Western India to East Africa to Southern Arabia to various islands in the Indian Ocean. As the novel opens, she is living in retirement with her daughter Marjana, who is about 10. However, a rich woman disturbs her peace, insisting that Amina recover her granddaughter Dunya, who has apparently been kidnapped by a murderous but magically powerful Frank. Amina doesn't want anything to do with this job -- it will be very dangerous and will take her away from her beloved daughter. But the woman is able to essentially blackmail Amina -- and, besides, a teenage girl in peril is hard to abandon. (Especially when that girl turns out to be the daughter of one of Amina's former crewmates.)

So Amina begins to investigate, and soon realizes that Dunya's situation is more complicated than her grandmother has portrayed -- it seems that Dunya, a promising scholar, may have run away to escape an arranged marriage to a much older man. Nonetheless, Amina feels compelled to continue her quest, and the novel takes the form of a traditional caper story, beginning with reassembling Amina's old crew: her first mate, Tinbu; her navigator, Majed; and Dalila, a Christian woman and expert poisoner. (Eventually the cast of characters becomes quite diverse in terms of religion, gender, age, and sexuality.) In time she reunites as well with her husband, Marjana's father, who is a demon. 

The story is very exciting -- it's probably the most pure fun of the nominees I've read to date. The villain (the Frank) is truly a horrible murderer. There are fascinating monsters, a magical island, some well done comic scenes. It's also nicely framed, with Amina telling her story to a scribe, Jamal -- and who Jamal actually is eventually becomes an interesting and important point.

The book isn't perfect. My main issue is the prose, which is kind of a mixed bag. Voice is a very important component of prose, and the voices here (mainly Amina's but also Jamal's) are quite well captured -- a bit 21st Century to be sure but that's hard to avoid. They are lively and involving. The problem, though, is that it needed a pretty rigorous copy-editing step that it didn't seem to get. There are lots of words that don't mean what the story seems to think. I know lots of people don't care about prose, but I do, and errors of this sort just nag at me.

So -- a fun novel, worth reading. Would I have nominated it? Probably not, but I can see why people did, and it's not a bad nomination.