Amina al-Sirafi is a legend of the twelfth-century Indian Ocean: a fearsome nakhudha (ship's captain), smuggler, and pirate whose exploits have become the stuff of tall tales. But those days are behind her. Retired, hiding from old enemies, and quietly raising her daughter, Amina wants nothing to do with the sea — until a wealthy, grieving matriarch offers her a fortune to find her kidnapped granddaughter, taken by a dangerous Frankish mercenary meddling in forces he does not understand.
The job is impossible to refuse and even harder to survive, so Amina reassembles her old crew for one more voyage across the Gulf of Aden and beyond. What begins as a rescue soon tangles with genuine magic, marids and demons, and a past Amina has tried hard to bury, testing her wits, her loyalties, and her disbelief in the supernatural.
The first book in Shannon Chakraborty's Amina al-Sirafi series, this is a swashbuckling historical fantasy narrated as Amina's own dictated memoir — wry, worldly, and rich with the culture of the medieval Islamic world. It offers a rare adventure led by a middle-aged mother and reformed criminal, full of found family, high-seas peril, and hard-won wonder.