Sophomore novels are notoriously hard, especially if the debut has been successful. The same basic principle applies to the second volume in a trilogy whose first has been as well received as The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (2023).
When readers first met one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates in February 2023, the “criminal, sinner, foul-mouthed” middle-aged single mother of one with a bad knee was somewhat reluctantly retired, with an abundance of secrets hidden from her family. But she couldn’t stop yearning for the open seas, filled with a “blazing grief” as she watched the winds come and go without following: “My ancestors had attuned their lives to the sea for far too long for me to forget its rhythms […] Seafaring had been stamped into my soul long ago; there was no rooting it out now.”
So, when a former crewman’s (very wealthy) mother tracked her down and offered the kind of money she could only dream of, if only she safely returned the woman’s kidnapped granddaughter, Amina felt compelled to accept, even before the old woman threatened everything and everyone she held dear. She convinced herself that she was doing it to secure her family’s future, and rounded up the old gang for one last grand adventure on her ship, the Marawati: her friend Dalila, the Mistress of Poisons; first mate Tinbu; and her oldest friend and trusted navigator, Majed.
By the time we turned the final pages of that first book, not only was Amina not finished with her life as a nakhuda, a sea captain; she was also imbued with supernatural powers and in debt to the peris, the elemental air beings who tasked her with retrieving the five Transgressions: powerful talismans bridging the human and magical worlds.
One of these, the Moon of Saba, was already retrieved and destroyed in the first book. The Tapestry of Fate picks up not long after, with the core crew retrieving Transgression number two (the Mortar of Mithridates). Antics ensue, obviously, but the group is successful, and Amina, Dalila, Tinbu, and Majed escape to safety.
We then get a glimpse of what life is like for Amina on land in between these retrievals. A daughter is getting older, and not only has more questions about her mysterious father—because she herself seems to be displaying unsettling magical tendencies (oh if only she knew, poor child)—but also resents her mother for the obvious lies she tells as explanation, for continuing to leave her behind for long stretches, and for her increasingly stifled and sheltered life. Marjana isn’t the only one unhappy with Amina either; her mother and brother are also vocal about their understandable concerns, to which Amina never has any reassuring answers.
When there is another urgent summons from the peris for Transgression number three, Amina is almost relieved that she can escape to the seas—she convinces herself that “all [she can] do [is] sail, try to complete this latest deadly quest, and then return to deal with the aftermath of it all.” The Transgression in question is a vengeful spindle rumoured to hold the power to change the threads of our lives, wielded by the dangerously powerful witch Lab on an island that is as impossible to find as it is to escape. And yet Amina accepts that by running away, she has taken the easier way out of a situation with no good options!
Notions of spinning and weaving entangled with fate are present in a great number of tales from cultures across the world. In a series that has already established its preference for strong, complicated, rebellious women who defy societal norms and navigate the often contradictory natures of society and their dreams, it’s quite fitting that, from all the powerful magical objects that Chakraborty could have chosen for the second book, she picked a spindle. This item is of course one of humanity’s oldest and most common tools—one that is, when you stop to think about it, an “astonishingly profound symbol” of life, death, and everything in between.
Later, when the Marawati runs aground on Lab’s island, Amina and her crew discover the White City of Khatti Ugal. On the surface it is nothing short of a utopia. But there is enough of the uncanny for readers, and Amina, to be uneasy—even if we can’t immediately explain why. A creeping sense of dread, that things aren’t as they seem, is skillfully evoked. Even as Majed and Tinbu and the rest of the crew supervise the repairs on the Marawati, Amina and Dalila soon find themselves included in Queen Lab’s court. They’re undercover, trying to discover the truth of the island and its ruler, and a way to find and destroy the accursed spindle. But soon, Dalila, pretending to be a physician, is increasingly unlike herself and seems taken in by Lab and her courtiers, keeping even more secrets than usual from Amina. Our nakhuda realises that she must rely on her own wits if there is any chance of their mission’s success.
Just like in the first book, this is a story told by Amina to the scribe Jamal al-Hilli after the fact (so we’re already aware that she makes her way off the island), though it is written from her first-person point of view. But once the voyage to Lab’s island begins, nearly a quarter of the way into the book (the crew first have to go to—and later escape from—an infamous floating island to save Dalila from her past), Jamal starts to narrate second-person interludes in parallel. This strand is a slowly unfurling, centuries-long, often monstrously bloody story of the spindle and the one who wields it. This deepens the character and the motivations of a villain far more complex than the first book’s Falco Palamenestra. And in choosing an older woman—a mother and weaver merged with the dying spirit of an ancient goddess of fates—as the person whom Amina and Dalila must face off against, Chakraborty is able to add an intriguing layer to the story, and the series’ larger themes.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi concerned itself equally with the nature of stories and storytelling, and particularly the lives and perceptions of women. Jamal, utilising the oral storytelling tradition to full effect, was instrumental in making readers aware of the various devices employed, and the many biases present in narrating any story. It’s something he continues to do in The Tapestry of Fate: “Storytellers, scribes, even historians are aware of how malleable and selective stories are and can be,” he informs us at the very beginning. “After all, they are also accustomed to plucking strands that will resonate with their audiences; weaving them into the tapestry of an account, while other threads are excluded from the loom.”
Amina, Dalila, and even, when it comes to it, Lab are all used to the ways in which stories about women are manipulated by men: “jagged edges of capable, ruthless queens [are polished away] so they may be remembered as saints,” while other capable, cunning women are narrated as witches. To be a woman, the first book correctly pointed out, is to have your story misremembered. Discarded. Twisted.
Amina is a believer, an at times lapsed Muslim who is trying hard to atone, knowing that there are many ways to practice her faith and reconcile the life she has chosen. It is a life that’s more than the lot society claimed was hers—she who never fit in, always uncomfortable with the limited roles laid out for her and other women. The nakhuda’s past exploits have ensured that she will always be feared and gossiped about in equal measure, as if controlling what is said about her will mean controlling her, this strong woman who towers over many men. Even before she was granted supernatural strength, there were rumours that she was in fact a sorceress—because how could a female sail a ship so deftly except by using forbidden magic? After all, “men [found] it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman.”
But she wants even more—has always wanted more even if it takes her a while to accept these ambitions, this burning desire. Her estranged husband (and the father of her daughter, even though neither have any idea about the other) is an ancient chaos spirit named Raksh, who calls Amina a “veritable feast of yearning,” which is what drew him to her to begin with. She wants to be a legend; he wants to help her get there:
I wanted to have adventures, to be a hero, to have my tales told in courtyards and street fairs, where kids who’d grown up like me, with more imagination than means, might be inspired to dream. Where women who were told there was only one sort of respectful life for them could listen to tales of another who’d broken away—and thrived when she’d done so.
Nothing’s easy, of course. Because how could Amina enjoy being on the Marawati if it “kept [her] from the daughter [she] loved more than life?” Amina’s life has always been divided into the “safe if dull harbour of home versus the chaos of a career that began in smuggling and ended in the supernatural,” but at the end of the first book, she had begun to nurture a quiet hope that she could be an adventuring nakhuda and a mother. And, even if this comes with a price (of absence and distance) with which Amina may never make her peace, she hoped that Marjana would understand as she grows older. It is a hope that was always fragile but in this second volume seems destined to be brief, as Amina’s life gets exponentially more complicated to juggle. As she wryly confides in Jamal, the accusations of “evil djinn” sounded simpler than her reality—“merely a supernaturally blessed treasure hunter who could see the magical world, was indebted to a bunch of bird people, and had a daughter with a chaos spirit”—after all, the djinn wouldn’t have suffered so much guilt and indecision either!
The Tapestry of Fate, then, is a much darker story than its predecessor. Richer too, and more claustrophobic as we suffer with Amina, often in isolation and up against the most devious adversary she has ever faced. This is an Amina more uncertain than ever before, even with her supernatural powers.
The bulk of this story takes place in one location, with the gang separated for large parts of it. After the first quarter or so of the book, which features high-seas hijinks similar to the previous book, the shift is a little jarring. But this parting, and with it the lack of the wonderful found family of non-conforming, diverse people that characterised the first book—as well as the simmering strife between Amina and Dalila which often feels irreconcilable—adds to the sense of narrative urgency already ramped up by the reveals of Jamal’s interludes, which we as readers are privy to much before Amina.
However, all of this would have been more effective if the middle of the book didn’t feel so long and repetitive, with very little forward momentum. It may be a decision taken to mirror Amina’s frustration at the lack of progress despite the passage of time, and also to hint at the way time itself moves while on the island (something that will make a sense at the very end), but the same could have been conveyed and achieved with a tighter middle so that the fantastic final third didn’t feel simultaneously so abrupt and full in comparison.
But the finale rewards us and leaves us wanting more. Magic always has a price; Amina and her crew know this well. But, on the evidence of the major cliffhanger that plows into them (and us) when we think all is finally safe, the third of Chakraborty’s books promises full consequences—and a price none of us expected.