I’ve been waiting for a sequel to Shannon Chakraborty’s The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi since the book first came out in 2023. It’s been two long years, but the sequel, The Tapestry of Fate, was worth the wait.
The second book in the series picks up relatively soon after the last, where Amina made a deal with enigmatic elemental creatures of the air called the peris. Her end of the bargain obligates her to find and destroy what they call Transgressions, magical objects full of great power. The peris have given Amina supernatural strength and healing powers to do so, and now the nakhudha is back her on her ship, the Marawati, for months at a time, much to the consternation of her family who thought her sailing days were over.
Her family also knows nothing about her deal with the peris or her supernatural strength, but they’re not fools. All of them see through Amina’s flimsy lies and confront her about it, even her 10-year-old daughter Marjana, who also appears to be gaining magical abilities thanks to her father, the chaos demon Raksh. Amina pushes off being honest with them, however, and tells herself she will have the hard conversation of sharing at least some of the truth with them after she finishes her next job for the peris. But that next job—to find and destroy a magical spindle wielded by a witch named Lab on an island where ships crash on its shores—is more intensive and harrowing than Amina expects.
A lot happens in The Tapestry of Fate, however, before we reach Lab’s island. There’s an initial quest to destroy another Transgression (think of it as an aperitif to the main course served up by the spindle and Lab), a laydown of Amina’s family issues, and another mini-adventure on an awesome floating pirate island where Amina must help her decades-long friend, the poison master Dalila. Raksh, as enigmatic chaos demons are wont to do, also comes back into the story, even though Amina trapped him in a locked trunk she threw overboard in the middle of the ocean at the end of the last book.
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The Tapestry of Fate
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About a quarter of the way into the book, however, Amina and her crew are en route to Lab’s domain. It’s here we also get parts of the story told from the point of view of Lab, which give the villain of the story unexpected and devastating depth. (It should be noted that, like the first book in the series, Amina is telling the story to the scribe Jamal; how he gets the first-hand accounts from Lab remains a mystery until close to the end of the story, but it’s a secret that pays off.)
There are several mysteries to uncover on the island after the Marawati crashes on its shores. Her ship is wrecked, and in the meantime, the queen keeps Amina and Dalila in her fantastical city because they seem interesting, while the rest of the crew are kept by the Marawati working on repairs. The city’s inhabitants, most of them wearing woven garments with elaborate capes, don’t quite add up. And neither does the queen. Dalila, from Amina’s point of view, also seems off, more into her experiments than usual. From there, Amina works to figure out what the heck is going on. She wants to get back to her daughter (the guilt of being away from your kids when on a work trip is timeless), and to do so, she must find the magical spindle and complete her job for the peris.
Most of the secrets she uncovers on the island aren’t surprising, but the story’s machinations are entertaining and keep you turning pages. The book also took some unexpected turns with the how and the why of some of those secrets, which add to the action and suspense expected from a pirate adventure.
The plot, however, wasn’t what kept me reading. The characters, specifically the relationship between Amina and Dalila, are the heart of the novel. The two women, both far from perfect and both shaped by the hardships and adventures they’ve faced over the decades, drew me in. The first book touched on the inherent tension between the two: Amina is a mother and grapples with the reality that a woman can’t be an engaged mother and a great pirate at the same time, all of the time, while Dalila devoted herself to her experiments at the cost of engaging with the rest of the crew. Because of this, they have different views of the world—and Tapestry of Fate sees those differences coming to a head. Together with the other complex relationships the two have (which also have their own problematic twists and turns… I’m looking at you, Amina and Raksh), the novel weaves a complex tapestry about Amina’s family, found and otherwise.
Overall, The Tapestry of Fate is a darker tale than Amina’s first book, made the more so by one twist in the story that I didn’t see coming. That revelation made my heart wrench as a mother, and I audibly gasped. The signs were there, but they didn’t snap into place until the last page, as all good, unexpected reveals should be.
Chakraborty is already working on the third book in the planned trilogy, and I’m hoping we don’t have to wait another two years to find out what happens with Amina, her family, and the rest of her crew.
The Tapestry of Fate is published by Harper Voyager.
