The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1)

by Shannon Chakraborty

she must be a sorceress, because no female could sail a ship so deftly without the use of forbidden magics—whose appearance somehow both beguiles and repulses. Traders along our fair shores warn against speaking her name as though she is a djinn that might be summoned as such—though, strangely, they have little compunction when it comes to spreading vicious rumors about her body

Biographers polish away the jagged edges of capable, ruthless queens so they may be remembered as saints, and geographers warn believing men away from such and such a place with scandalous tales of lewd local females who cavort in the sea and ravish foreign interlopers. Women are the forgotten spouses and unnamed daughters. Wet nurses and handmaidens; thieves and harlots. Witches. A titillating anecdote to tell your friends back home or a warning.

we have stories of treasure-seeking princesses and warrior women that end with the occasional happiness. But they are expected to end—with the boy, the prince, the sailor, the adventurer. The man that will take her maidenhood, grant her children, make her a wife. The man who defines her. He may continue his epic—he may indeed take new wives and make new children!—but women’s stories are expected to dissolve into a fog of domesticity . . . if they’re told at all.

Had I been so naïve to see purpose in the incidents that had led to me being here, rather than quirks of an uncaring universe? What madness to gaze upon the violent chaos and cruelty of this world and have faith!