The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

Join the crew of the Marawati!
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty is the first in a magic filled swash buckingling trilogy. Enter a world of pirates, magic, demons, and a badass protagonist coming out of retirement. 
Jen and Ellie review the world building, plot, language and characters (spoilers and all!) before diving into the challenges in the book. Yo ho ho and a boat load of magic. 🏴‍☠️ 
Let's see if we survive this!

Transcript

IWST_Episode_2_AminaAlSirafi
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Ellie: [00:00:00] Hi and welcome to If We Survive This, a podcast where we read fantasy books and discuss how likely we've been to survive the challenges in them. A quick warning that this podcast is filled with spoilers for all aspects of the book. 

Jen: I'm Jen, the slightly more bookish side of the podcast, though I do have some fitness credentials.

Ellie: And 

I'm Ellie, 

I could survive in the wild for weeks as long as I have a good audiobook. Today, we're discussing The Adventures of Amina al-Sarafi by Shannon Chakraborty. Let's see if we survive this. We follow the legendary pirate Amina al-Sarafi as she gets blackmailed into returning to the seas years after her attempted retirement.

The book opens with Amina being tracked down by Salima, a wealthy woman from Arden who is convinced her granddaughter Dunya was kidnapped by Falco Palamenestra, a Frank with a taste for power. After being promised more money than she can turn away, Amina is convinced to leave behind her young daughter and mother to take on this one last job, getting her old crew back together on the Marawati.

They sail to [00:01:00] Socotra, where they meet her demon husband, who she had previously tried to kill, and find out what exactly Falco is doing. He is close to discovering the Moon of Saba with Dunya's help, a legendary artifact that Dunya had been researching. Falco has enslaved a Marid, a giant sea creature, to do his bidding, which he unleashes on Amina and her crew.

At the end of this run in, Falco leaves her for dead and her crew enslaved. Amina finds herself on a magical island with her husband Rashk, where she acquires supernatural abilities and makes a deal with the Peri people to find the magical objects called transgressions and destroy them. The first of which being the Moon of Saba, which not only holds great power, but would essentially torment all of Rashk's kind, including Amina's daughter Marjana.

Amina returns to the human world, to find Falco and Dunya in the process of discovering the moon of Saba, which she cannot let fall into the Frank's hands. She and Dunya reverse the spell and free the trapped aspect of the moon to the sky above. So, Jen, what did you think of The Adventures of Amina al Sarafi?

Jen: [00:02:00] I liked it, but I didn't love it. Okay. So I've read Chakraborty's books before. I'm a big fan of the Daevabad trilogy. But I find that for me, she's a bit slow to get into the story and to get into like depth and character. And when you're working with a trilogy, you get in pretty pretty fast. You just have to get through the first book and then the second and third book are all up to speed and the pace is going.

Whereas, so, this is obviously set up to be a series but we only read the one book and I felt like at least half the book was just waiting for the story to start. It was the putting together of everything and I got really into it at the end but I just wish it could have been like that from, you know, 100 pages in instead of like 250 pages in.

Ellie: Yes. Okay. So in our very first episode, I said, I read this at the end of 2022. That's a lie. The book didn't come out until this year, 2023. Um, it's just been such a long year that I forgot that this actually, I read this back in like March. So [00:03:00] I, I really liked the book. I possibly like it more than you from the sounds of it, but I also agree with your, your, um, Criticisms.

They're not quite, yeah, for your critique of the book so far. I have also read Chakraborty's previous trilogy and really liked it. And this is a, this is a starting book. It kind of, it feels like the one last heist premise, but it is also the start of a whole new series, which assembling the team. To do this whole trilogy, taking up three quarters of the book was a lot.

I did, like, I think what really, really sold me so much on this book was that we have a female main character who is over the age of 35. 

Jen: Yeah. 

Ellie: Who is still as badass as you can get. 

Jen: Yeah, it's always, it's like, it's definitely so refreshing to see an older character. An older female character just being a badass and not like ironically a badass.

She just is, it's like, she's just kind of doing her best and going along and you're like, Oh wow, she is [00:04:00] actually fantastic at all of this 

stuff. 

Ellie: So much of the time, the like main characters either in their twenties. Or they're 500 years old. There is nothing in the middle. And I, I really, um, quite often dislike, like, children tropes, I guess, in books.

Or like, or when the main character, like, falls in love and then it's like, Oh, now we're gonna, like, have a family. I'm like, this, this soon? Really? For somebody who, yeah, tends to, like, who finds that the most annoying part of books are, like, pregnancy tropes or just, like, bin. Instant, instant DNF. No. I really loved how Amina's relationship with her daughter Marjana was written and that kind of exploration of like, yes my mother, but that does not make me any less badass.

Jen: Yeah, I really like that it showed that like she had put aside so much of herself for raising and protecting her daughter. Just because she had put that to the side doesn't mean that it's no longer her. And we see so much of her like dealing with the guilt of [00:05:00] wanting to be back in the sea and wanting to do what she loves, but also wanting to be on land with her daughter and like coming to the realization that like, you know, the best way that I can show my daughter how to be a fantastic, awesome person is to be a fantastic, awesome person, you know?

Yes. That was really nice to see. I'm also, yeah, I don't like when, Books are like, Oh, and then they had a kid and then the character kind of just like stops being themselves. They turn into a trope of parenthood and that's so reductive in the book, but it's so reductive for people. Like you don't magically lose your entire personality once you have a child.

Like you don't go from being a unique person to being mother.

Ellie: Yes. 

Jen: So it's really refreshing to see it actually being written as like. No, this is, this is a person. She's had character progression. She is a human. She will have more of it. Her life is continuing, even after having her daughter.

Ellie: Yes. 

Jen: I feel like one of the things that, like, with the pacing, so we have Salima finds Amina.

And she initially bribes her and then Amina goes off [00:06:00] and gets to a contact. The contact gets killed and she realizes how powerful Falco is. And then she comes back to Salima and then she gets threatened to go and actually do the adventure. And I kind of feel like you could have cut all that out and Salima could have started with the threat and we would have gotten to the book a lot faster.

Ellie: Yeah, I think in building the world and the characters, the pacing suffered a little bit and the thing is that I kind of like I know I'm going to enjoy the world from the previous books so I was kind of willing to be like this is fine but it could have started faster. I did enjoy going off and finding all of the old crewmates and seeing where their lives had gone and well not where they'd gone but but but how it like it felt very Ocean's Eleven y to me.

Jen: Yeah. 

Ellie: I only mean that as a compliment I actually re watched the movie the other night. 

Jen: Oh I love Ocean's Eleven, it's fantastic. 

Ellie: So good for, like, I don't know why this is what I got into my head, but you know, um, the Incredibles? 

Jen: Mm hmm. 

Ellie: You know the little, the woman who makes their, their costumes? 

Jen: Edna Mode.

Ellie: Edna Mode! Yes! [00:07:00] That is basically who I pictured as Dahlia. 

Jen: Nice! 

Ellie: Yeah, yeah, as our potions master. Like, obviously more, uh, mysterious looking, but a different version of Dahlia. of Edna. 

Jen: Slightly 

taller. 

Ellie: Slightly. 

Jen: Yeah, I really enjoyed that the, like, all the characters we meet had lives that continued on after their retirements, essentially, and that we didn't end up with a case of, you know, oh, this, like, Majad can come with us, but his teenage son, who was him basically when he was younger, will come in his stead, which I feel would be more of a, like, common trope to do.

So it was nice to see that, like, the crew got back together and they all genuinely. cared for each other it wasn't a case like none of them were really in it for the money they're there to help Amina and help her daughter and figure everything out they all made jokes about the money and they definitely wanted money but they weren't like that wasn't the the core motivation behind it 

Ellie: and if we're talking about characters we always have to talk about Amina's current husband, [00:08:00] um, Rashk, or Rashk, I can't, I can't pronounce his name as well as the audiobook ever will.

I, I, I have to admit defeat there, but if we're talking about who I, who I picture different characters as, he's Jack Sparrow in the kind of like, like not, not looks wise or anything, but he just gives off a similar energy. 

Jen: I really wouldn't have said Jack Sparrow, like he definitely came across as more of a sniveling coward to me, to be honest.

Ellie: I guess I kind of see Jack Sparrow as a little bit of a sniveling coward. 

Jen: Like a coward, but without 

the sniveling. That's the thing. Like, Jack Sparrow for me is an opportunistic coward. Whereas Rashk is more of like the whingy coward that you get stuck with, unfortunately. 

Ellie: Okay, yeah, that's pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, but definitely they're like, oddist, or the oddist isn't, isn't there, but not who I was expecting at all. 

Jen: Yeah, definitely. Like when you hear that her husband's a demon, you're kind of like, oh, he's going to be this, he's going to be that. And then you meet him and you're like, that [00:09:00] is not what I expected at all.

But I can see how you're in that situation with him. 

Ellie: And I get so Speaking of the kind of like mythology of the book, this is something that I really love about Chakraborty's books in general. She takes kind of mythology and, or parts of mythology from like this area and expands on them really well.

I feel like there's so much fantasy out there that stick to the same kind of magic universes or magic, what's it called when there's like a defined

Jen: system? 

Ellie: Magic. System, thank you. And I guess I know so little about this kind of like Middle Eastern into Asian history because I have no connections to there.

So for me, it's a really, really exciting area to explore and I feel like she does a really like good level, like she really researches. these areas as she writes about them. I don't know if that's, if that's how you feel about the, the mythology of the books. 

Jen: Oh yeah, [00:10:00] I love, like, I love the mythology in these books and it's, they're kind of like, they're a great counterpoint to the thing I was complaining about in the last episode about Irish words and names and things.

Like there are a lot of fantasy books, especially like all the Fae books, they're based on this like Americanized concept of Irish and like Celtic fairies. It's kind of exhausting. They're all the same. And then you get, um, an author like Chakraborty and you're like, Oh my God. I like, this is a fully fleshed out folklore mythology that I know nothing about.

And you kind of just have to go in with an open mind and just be accepting of all the different things that appear, which I really enjoy. And I love learning more about like the different characters, the different creatures, and every now and then having to like, especially the first of her books that I read, having to stop and like Google things and be like, what the hell is a Peri?

Like what? 

Ellie: Yes. 

Jen: Okay, cool. And also, like, The Adventures of Amina al Sarafi, I know that she put in a lot of work to make it historically accurate. Like, the plot obviously isn't historically accurate. I don't think, you know, [00:11:00] marids and whatnot actually existed. But when it comes to the actual world that they're inhabiting and the different ports that they went to, how, like, the crew acted, what people are wearing, how their, like, relationships are with themselves and with, like, the culture.

I think that's all like very actually factual. So it feels really rooted in the world. 

Ellie: I didn't know that she's um, it comes across in the book, I guess. I hadn't looked into whether she had tried to make it super factual or not, but the depth of the research really, really comes across, which I really appreciate.

Jen: I also really enjoyed that um, Amina al-Sarafi could not pronounce Falco's surname and she messes it up so many times. That's why it's called Falco instead of uh, Palmanestra, I think is what it is. And it's like, yeah, that's, that's fair. Like I, I totally get that. 

Ellie: Um, in general, I, so I am lucky enough that I've already mentioned it.

I think I listened to the audio book of this first. I think for, for me, The pronunciation would have been quite tricky reading it otherwise. 

Jen: Yeah, [00:12:00] yep. Taking a lot of guesses here. 

Ellie: And it wasn't actually something when I started listening to audiobooks that I realized I'd appreciate so much, but in preparing for us recording today, I'm now looking at like the, the list of characters that you've written down and I have to be like, I have to kind of sound out the words in my head and I was like, Oh, Oh, that, that, that's how you spell Majed.

Okay. Different pros and different cons. 

Jen: Yeah. There's definitely, like it's, it's one of the things that I do really like about the book is that it doesn't, it doesn't assume that the reader is completely unfamiliar with the culture. Like it's, this is just the world and you are learning about it. And if you don't know what something is, do the legwork yourself, deal with it.

You know, like if there's something like that story specific, it will explain it in a story context, but it's not going to explain, now probably pronouncing this wrong, Nakuda or Nakhuda. The term for captain. 

Ellie: Oh yeah, uh, Nakhuda. 

Jen: Nakhuda. Like you read that and it's just there and you figure out from context, it's like, Oh, this is the leader.

This is the [00:13:00] captain. That's fine. And then there's different terms like that, that come up that you're like, you might not know, it's not going to give you a paragraph explaining what this word is, if you're finding it so difficult that you can't understand it, just Google it. Like do a bit of work yourself.

And I really appreciate that because it feels like the book isn't like talking down to you. 

Ellie: Yes, yeah. And like, if we can all remember the standard Western tropes so well, we can certainly learn some new ones by ourselves without, yeah, somebody having to just like, lay it all out super obvious for us. One thing I did miss listening to the audiobook, however, was just how pretty the physical book is.

I know this has nothing to do with the story, nothing, like, There's the whole phrase, don't judge a book by its cover. However, covers are designed for you to judge them. This is the whole point of the cover. Like if it can't make you fall like interested enough in the book to pick it up, then the cover isn't doing its job.

And one thing I can say, having now got the book for this is, oh my God, it is so beautiful. 

Jen: It is so pretty. It's so shiny. 

Ellie: And [00:14:00] I don't know if the cover that we have is a European cover or like Ireland and UK cover, because in. Doing the smallest, smallest bit of research before recording. There is actually another cover that I think is the U.

S. cover that is, yeah, that's like a boat being held up with some tentacles from the Marud, I'm assuming, which is fine, but our cover is way more, it's like gold embossed, like nautical kind of symbols and swords and waves. And it just, like, it doesn't give any of the story away, but it is entirely enticing and beautiful.

Jen: Yeah, I'm just looking it up now. The other cover is very kind of, it's more like Sinbad vibes. 

Ellie: Mm hmm, exactly. And obviously this is heavily, like, 

Jen: inspired by, by Sinbad. So this book really feels like the first book in a series, and we do have some good progression especially for Amina al-Sarafi, but I kind of feel like a lot of, a lot of the book is set up.

[00:15:00] There isn't a lot that kind of, wrecking my brain here trying to be like, Oh, this, this character did X to Y, they changed and such and such, and it's like, it feels like I'll definitely read the next book that comes out in the series, but this does feel just a little light. On stuff as a standalone, like all of the, the side characters, they have great setups for things that will come into play more later, but they didn't have really big character moments.

The 

Mistress of Poisons had probably the best development out of any of the other characters, but even that wasn't great. And like, I know I'm sounding like quite negative about the book. I did quite enjoy it, but it's like, it does feel like everyone was quite like, we've got Amina and then everyone else was just a little bit shallow.

Ellie: Ah, that's really interesting. So I think if we, not that we're going to compare books to previous episodes in every episode, but when we were talking about Fourth Wing in the previous episode, we were kind of, you said how, Violet starts off as a [00:16:00] very one dimensional character so that we can all kind of empathize with her.

And then she really like, kind of start, like, fleshes out of it and kind of becomes a character, which I think was a very valid point. And I think in this book, all the characters for me came fleshed out. It really felt like we were stepping into these characters lives as they're halfway through their lives.

Like that they are rounded people, but that's all we're, that's as far as it's going. Like we're meeting these characters, we're learning about them, but we don't actually see any arc. The arc is so big, like they're already halfway through the arc and we're just like, like learning about them where they are now and that the following books will hopefully be the rest of the arc.

I'm kind of drawing a giant rainbow over my head. Does not work for an audio, uh, media, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to convey. And I think this actually might be slightly similar to the first book in the City of Brass. If I think back, that book, uh, Chakraborty's first book was a lot of developing the world and like a [00:17:00] lot goes down at the end of the book, but it kind of sets up the next two.

And I wonder, is this a similar situation in that it's building up the place and the characters. And the, the lore and whatever, and now we're going to launch off into the adventures. 

Jen: I wonder if, like, I kind of, I hope that's what it is, but what I'm thinking of is City of Brass had like three POV characters.

Mm. This only has one. And with City of Brass. We, uh, we get the character progression through the narrator characters. The side characters don't have as much progression in them, which makes me concerned that the non perspective characters in Amina al-Sarafi aren't going to get enough character development and change.

Ellie: Ooh, 

well. 

Could you 

count Dunya slash Jamal as somebody who will develop a more of their own POV, as opposed to being kind of a narrator esque?

Jen: I 

don't know. So with Jamal, this is actually something, a bit of a tangent. When I first started the book to do the writing style that I found a little awkward.

[00:18:00] So Jamal, The book is written as Amina al-Sarafi is telling her tales to a scribe, who's Jamal, um, who's writing them down. And there's this kind of like commentary that happens occasionally and there's like a hyphen and then a phrase. And when this first happened, I wasn't sure if this was to denote someone else speaking in the moment, but it's actually just Amina kind of like responding to things that have happened.

And it actually took me a little bit to figure out how that works. Like it wasn't immediately obvious. To me, 

Ellie: I was really curious how that would be in the physical book, because in the audio recording, it's like the standard clear, nice audio that you assume from an audio book. And then when it goes to that cutaway, it's literally like the voice actor puts their hand on the mic and is like, talk like that muffled.

Like, what do you mean you, you want me to talk this way? I'm not gonna talk that way. Which makes it very obvious that it's like, but I had no idea how that was gonna be written. 

Jen: Yeah, it's something that, like, you figure it out and once you figure it out, it's fine. But initially I was like, who's speaking [00:19:00] now?

Are these like three different people? Is like, how, how much does this change? And also one of the things that was kind of irritating with that is I have a love hate relationship with first person perspective. And one of the reasons for that is sometimes when, when writing is in first person perspective, they try and act as Too much as like a third party narrator.

And they use phrases that people never use. They'll use insights that people would never say when they're talking about things. There's one point where Amina is describing a place and she starts saying that it's the kind of place where, I think, yeah, it's at the start. It's, uh, during the day, there's a lovely place that attracted flamingos and dolphins when the wind and tide were just right.

Water would burst from the rocks and geysers to the light of children and picnicking families. Would you say that if you're telling a story about how you're about to encounter like a sea witch? Like, really? Um, and things like that really kind of annoy me that it's like, if you want to write in a third person descriptive, write in a third person descriptive.

Don't act like it's a first person narrative. Now there aren't a lot of instances that that happened, but it's definitely happened a [00:20:00] couple of times and I was kind of like, oh, okay, fine. 

Ellie: I think I was able to, ignore that a bit because I think at the beginning, even before that bit, it, it says that like tales have been told to like bewitch and beguile and like history's been passed, like there are all these fables and whatever and that like ascribes duty is to, is to weed out the fact from the fiction.

Something. I'm like, this is high paraphrasing. But then it ends with, however, it would be remiss of me not to say that this has been written to entertain. And so I guess I kind of took those more flourishes of, of yeah, of like not quite first person to be that scene setting that the scribe is embellishing as the story is being told.

But I feel like that probably would sit better if it was further from. This kind of cut between what is supposed to be clear dictation and kind of like also talking directly to the scribe. Like if there's a further distance from that [00:21:00] moment, you probably wouldn't notice it as much. Whereas when it kind of comes straight after, you're like, yeah, somebody wouldn't literally say it like this.

Yeah. So I guess. We gotta figure out if we would survive in this swashbuckling world. And for once, Jen, we are going to be the young guns. 

Jen: Oh, 

wow. 

Ellie: On the team. 

Jen: The babbies. 

Ellie: Compared to nearly everybody else in the adventure. 

Jen: Yeah. 

I don't 

have. 40 years of sea 

experience under 

my 

belt. 

Ellie: I, my sea experience is confined to doing some like very basic sea kayaking tourism and taking the ferry to France a couple of times.

Jen: I've taken a boat to some small islands off Ireland and I went fishing on a boat once or twice. That's all I got. 

Ellie: Okay, 

so, so our seafaring abilities would be pretty damn low. 

Jen: Yeah, we are definitely not mermaids. Yep, this is definitely not our kind of thing. 

Ellie: No. 

Jen: Ooh, ooh, we both know how to tie knots though.

Maybe not sailor's knots, but we know how to [00:22:00] do climbing knots. 

Ellie: That is very, that is very fair. And I'm sure a clove hitch for climbing has another name for sailing. Like they're, they're going to have similar uses. Yeah. So actually, yeah, there you go. You found a skill that we both have. 

Jen: Transferable skills.

Ellie: Transferable skills. Okay. So climbing knots might become applicable to, if not exact sailing knots, then at least we would understand the mechanisms of twisting a figure of eight into whatever shape, as long as you then wouldn't accidentally tie a climbing knot and have the sails go flying off in the wrong direction.

But anyway. We might be left to just scrubbing decks as we build our sea legs, who knows? But I think our general fitness of running and being that bit younger would be advantageous in a, in a very low, low priority, but still a slight advantage in this world, both our knees work most of the time.

Jen: We do 

have good knees, mostly.

Yes. 

Ellie: [00:23:00] Yes. 

Jen: I feel like we could boat row quite well. 

Ellie: Yeah. 

Jen: But I could not read the stars. I know literally no stars. I probably, I could tell you where the moon is. That's about it. I would have trouble figuring out the North 

Star, to be honest with you, I'm terrible at them. 

Ellie: I, having grown up in the city, Jen, I think we can forgive you that the stars are not visible.

Jen: I could tell you where the satellites are.

Ellie: Okay, I can do, I can do basic stars. I can, I can pick out Orion's belt and the Big Dipper and I can like pick out Venus and Saturn when they're in the sky and Mars. So, but I can't navigate by them. Like if I like look up and rotate for five minutes, I'll find one of them, but in the five minutes it takes for me to rotate and find it, I'm pretty sure we would have started sailing in a different direction.

So I'm also not a sky, I'm not a stars navigator. Yeah. I don't know how that would do with seasickness or choppiness at all. 

Jen: Yeah. I don't know. I've, I've been both good and bad with seasickness and I don't know, like if I was on a big [00:24:00] boat, which is what these would be like the Marawati would be like big by our standards, small by ancient world standards boat.

Yeah. I don't know, but I guess the first, the first like core challenge that happened in the book was, uh, breaking the crew out of the prison. Oh, Hey. So, I guess we have to assume that we would have the help of, um, the, the poison lady. Dahlia. Dahlia. To help us. Yeah. Okay, yeah, if we're allowed to have her help.

Yeah, she done, like, most of the stuff there and then kind of, like, lied and brute forced, kind of. 

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. I am not an, I'm not an amazing 

liar. 

Jen: Oh me neither. 

Ellie: I'm mediocre.

Jen: I'm terrible. 

Ellie: Okay. I'll take on the lying, you can take on the brute force. 

Jen: Yeah. 

Yeah. 

You lie to them and I'll punch them in the face.

Ellie: Grand. Grand. Okay. Okay. I think what's nice about this book in terms of like the challenges. Is that it is like the concept of coming out of retirement means that these starter challenges are also [00:25:00] achievable to a certain degree. Like if our, if our character is coming out of retirement and we're joining her, we can't set her up against a dragon.

I know there's not dragons in this world, but you know what I mean, to start with, we have to, uh, have a surmountable, uh, challenge. Get the ball rolling, you know. So I think we could break into a prison. I think we could, or well, into this. Prison is an overstatement. 

Jen: Yeah. It's not a very prison y 

prison. It was just kind of like they're held in cells underneath like a building.

That was easy enough to get into. 

Ellie: Yeah.

Jen: I feel like, I feel like, yeah, we could probably do that. 

Ellie: And we can certainly run away. 

Jen: Certainly run away. I am, I would very much be able to do so when they're escaping. The harbor at Arden, they've got all their weapons. And then she's like, yep, we're just going that way.

We're going to just keep going that way. And they're just going to have to deal with it. And I'm like, I would. Yeah, a hundred percent. I'd be like, that's my decision. Let's just keep to it. If we die, we die. Oh well. 

Ellie: And yeah, there's something very realistic about like, We just got to go and we're just going to go and fingers crossed.

It makes it feel, yeah, like we're not going to try and magically [00:26:00] swing the boat this way and just like handbrake turn or whatever. It's like, no, we're going this way and we're just going to keep going. 

Jen: I feel like I have to say though, I don't think I would be in a, I don't think I'd be in the, the problem with Raksh.

Rox, the, the husband, because it's like, oh, you get drunk on a beach, you're gonna hook up with the first pretty guy that walks towards you. Nah. Gonna need a lot, a lot of alcohol for me to be like, you know what, I'm gonna marry this man. 

Ellie: I did kind of enjoy this strange hang up that Amina had with her faith, that like, Oh, no, no, no.

I'm going to marry you and then, and I can have, like, you'll be my fifth divorcee or whatever, but like, we're going to get married. This was her, this is her arbitrary line. I appreciate that. It is, I guess I, I don't come from that, from, uh, her faith or background, but plonk me, like modern day me into that world, like I, I am not getting married.

No, I'm sorry. No. Um, no matter how pretty anybody is, I'm not getting married to any, to any. I don't care if you're the, the [00:27:00] Sultan. I don't care if you're. A vizier. No, we're, we're not, we're not getting married.

Jen: I don't care how much palm wine I've had.

Ellie: Although apparently that was, yeah, I think it wasn't, um, bewitched palm wine.

Jen: I think it was just palm wine. Really potent. 

Ellie: Yeah. Just really, really strong. Well, actually, to be honest, if it was that strong, I would probably have just passed out. This is where, this is the challenge that I would have failed at. I, I am not a heavy drinker. I am a lightweight. I'm a cheap date, whatever phrase you want to use.

I would be passed out for the time Rashk got to me.

Jen: You just like smell it and it's like, Oh, she's gone. 

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. Just, I'll just find a comfy corner of the beach, curl up with my cloak, done. Uh, I guess the next big challenge for us is on Socotra, after they've landed and they're trying to suss out where the Frank has spirited away Dunya to.

Well, they, they, they find the cave and the goal is to sneak in and find Dunya and figure out what the hell is going on. How are, how are your sneaking skills, Jen? 

Jen: Not too [00:28:00] bad, actually, to be fair. I get given out to by people for accidentally sneaking up on them a lot. And I was like, I didn't realize I was sneaking and they're like, Oh, well, you didn't make any noise.

So. I feel like, ooh, actually, the sneakiness, I wouldn't have a problem with. Getting down the cave, I think I could deal. There is a bit where you have to crawl through this really narrow point that Rashk leads them through. The way it was described, it doesn't sound too bad. Like, it mainly sounds bad because Amina is so tall that she's finding it very small.

So I am significantly shorter than her. I might not find it too big a deal, but if it was a real kind of, you know, potholing level. Paying to get through, 

I, I would have trouble with that.



Ellie: Oh, that, 

that is a very good point that I had not thought about. I've gone potholing once, um, or caving, whatever. 

Jen: Actual real life nightmare.

Ellie: It was fine because what I, I went with a college climbing club. It was the easiest level that they could pick for us, sort of a situation. But I do know [00:29:00] myself that I get claustrophobic if the duvet is over my head in bed. So very, very tight, narrow spaces. Not my strong point. The general climbing skills that we have from having gone rock climbing, I think, definitely gonna, gonna suit us well here.

But I might be with you on the narrow spaces. But I am probably a foot shorter than Amina. So I have that going for me. I'm probably the size of her, like, 10 year old daughter, realistically.

Jen: And how are you on the sneaking side? 

Ellie: This is a tricky one. Having done a lot of sports, I feel like I am very quick on my feet.

However, having been a waitress, I also know that like, while I can carry a tray of glasses, I am also on the clumsy end of waitressing where I will manage to do, I'll manage to carry the tray and I'll get to like, the counter behind the bar where I have to put it down and then I will stumble and like, just about keep them all upright and not break them.

Like, I am as clumsy as you can be. And still managed to keep a waitressing job. Or at least that's how I was, [00:30:00] uh, all through college, up until, yeah, for my life. So as long as there wasn't a comedically placed helmet for me to accidentally kick or knock down a well, or, you know, as long as. Yeah, there wasn't something placed in the perfect position.

It's a 50 50 split on the sneaking for me. Like, I have the athleticism. I also just have the clumsy bad luck. So who knows? 

Jen: Solid maybe. 

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jen: Okay. So then I think the next is. Well, there's a fight with the Marid, but Amina al-Sarafi does not win. And I don't think anyone could win that. So, the next is really on the island with the Peri and the Daevas.

Now, the Daevas and stuff disappear pretty fast, but trying to strike up a deal with the Peri, who really, Don't want you there. Think you're an abomination yourself. And kind of just want to accidentally drop you out of the sky. 

Ellie: Who wouldn't love a race [00:31:00] like that, you know? 

Jen: Fantastic creatures. 

Ellie: I enjoyed, I enjoyed disliking the Peris.

Does that make sense? I enjoyed their creation. Annoying and pernickety they were. I did not join the debate team in school for strong reasons. My argument skills are restricted to me yelling at the book, knowing the book cannot respond, and I'm just going to have to finish the book anyway. So did you do any debating or, uh, such in school, Jen?

Jen: Yeah, I was 

on the debate team. 

Ellie: Oh, really? Nice. Yes. One of us works. 

Jen: Yeah, I feel like definitely, I feel like I'd definitely argue with them. How much I'd be willing to compromise on the really silly requests that they have that Raksh kind of set up. They'd be like, well, then you're dead. And it might take me a little while to actually get to the agreeing that I will do this as opposed to, well, I will just die.

I do have a tendency Dig my heels in when someone really starts annoying me, but yeah, I [00:32:00] mean like they didn't actually get to this really great deal at the end. It was this loophole filled thing that the Peri were just kind of like, oh, of course this will work. And they didn't seem to actually understand a lot of what was going on.

So I feel like, yeah, I could probably, could probably get out of it with a pretty good deal. 

Ellie: Okay. 

And as long as you were there, I'd just take whatever deal that you made. So like, I would be all for staying alive. So whatever, like, while the deal was not a great one, it meant being alive. So I probably would have been like, cool.

Okay. I'll just, I'll just run with that. 

Jen: 600 transgressions. 

We'll find them. We'll find them. 6 billion. Of course. I kind of expected them actually to offer that she was hunt down like hundreds of the transgressions. Okay. If they made her immortal. 

Ellie: Yeah. Oh, like just there when you said like 6 million, I was like, wait a second.

Then you'd have to stay alive for all of them. Oh, because who wouldn't want to be immortal in some instances. So maybe that's how, maybe that's how you get to be immortal in this world. [00:33:00] 

Jen: Yeah, could be 

how it ends. 

Ellie: You just keep adding on an extra five. But then when you get to a point where the peris are like, Yeah, you've done enough, and then you have to suddenly start pitching why you should actually hunt down the looking glass of 

Cairo or something.

Jen: Well, you see, if you're immortal and you'd spend so long doing that, like, you would Learn how to make transgressions. You could keep being like, Oh, I've destroyed the, given you these five to destroy. Here's all these other ones I just heard of for your list. And the list never ends because you keep making it longer.

Ellie: Oh, this is the truly sneaky mind 

coming out. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you're there, we're going to survive the Peri. As long as we're a team on the Peri, we'll be fine. 

Jen: So then we just have to convince a group of pirates that they want to join us on a raid.

Ellie: No problem. 

Jen: I feel like they'd be harder to convince than the Peri.

Like, I feel like the Peri, you could baffle with bullshit. Whereas the pirates would just kind of be like, nah, nah, I'm good. More, more arguing with a troll on the [00:34:00] internet than actually trying to convince people of anything. 

Ellie: See, with 

the Peri, I'm like, uh, I'm not good at debating. And like, you know, Pitching.

With the pirates, like, I feel like my charisma score is better for cajoling than for debating. I don't exactly know how that definition works, um, how you plot that on some sort of charisma card. 

Jen: Well, that's just charisma, you know? And I totally agree with you. Like you, not that you're bad at debating, but you, you're very charismatic.

So like totally people would be like, of course I'm going to help you, Ellie. 

Ellie: Okay. 

So, however, pirates. Yeah, everyday person convincing, like I can probably row with advantage. Convincing pirates, less, less definite. I guess in that case it does help to look like Amina al-Sarafi. 

Jen: And have 

like the family connections and the, you know, like 

long line of legendary pirates.

Ellie: Yes. Yeah. Golden incisor and six feet of muscle. Yeah. So our, Our combined height of, you're [00:35:00] taller than me, but like, 

I feel like we're still 

Jen: By a little bit, like what, two inches or something? 

Ellie: Yeah. I feel like if we, if the two of us in a trench coat, we make one, we make one of me. 

Jen: Yeah. We'd be one scary pirate.

Ellie: Okay. Convince the pirates to join us. I am only so so on this. How, what are you thinking? 

Jen: Yeah. 

I feel like this is actually like the big death moment for us in this. Um. 

Ellie: Yeah. 

We 

did pretty 

well, 

though. 

Jen: Yeah. Like, we did pretty confident up until this point where it's like, I'm just hoping one of them takes pity on us.

Ellie: That's a, that's what pirates are famous for, you know? Yeah. 

Jen: Of course.

Ellie: Pity and honor and.

Jen: All those things. 

Ellie: Helping damsels in distress. Yeah.

Jen: Oh yeah. 

Ellie: Not that I'm saying that we're damsel level, but.

Jen: We're 

definitely distressed at this point.

Ellie: Yeah. 

Okay. Okay. Well, okay. Questionably, we'll have pirates.

Questionably have a crew, unsure. Are you, can you release the Marid? 

Jen: Ooh, [00:36:00] um, probably. I'm gonna say probably. Because the way the fight goes, a lot of it is, so, it's Amina kind of processing what Khayzur had said about creatures don't want to be enslaved. Which, Like, automatically, it's like, the Marid is under Falco's control, how do you get him out of control?

And you see that there's all, like, these threads and things that are tying him back, like, tying them together. My first instinct in that would be, yeah, let's see if we can cut them. Might have a bit of difficulty climbing a semi non existent seaweed thread to get up to the top of the marid to cut it off.

I feel like that's definitely going to be pushing my physical abilities way beyond what they can do. But you have to assume, actually, that you've got the super speed and strength from the island. 

Ellie: Oh yeah, at this point, we've drunk the island water, yeah. 

Jen: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, With super speed and strength.

Don't feel like there's much in it that I couldn't do. This is being very cocky. I [00:37:00] personally could kill this giant sea creature. Well, not kill, but release it. But I feel like it's doable.

Ellie: Right now, 

yeah, right now, I feel more confident in trying to release the Marid than convincing the pirates to join us.

Jen: 100%. Yeah. 

Ellie: Infinitely more confident. I'm like, Oh, you want me to like, monkey climb along some invisible strands? You want me to cut things? You want me to jump about like a, like Tarzan? 

100%. Yes. Yeah. 

I will, I will put all of my energy behind this. You want me to like, stand up and like, present my case in front of some pirates?

No. So I'm with you. I think tag teaming it. We, we'd at least be more enthusiastic in our approach to trying to release the Marid. 

Jen: Mm. 

I also feel I probably get caught up in being overly empathetic for it, of like, oh no, this poor thing is trapped. And I, I'd be like, let everything else fuck up. I have to let this thing get out and get completely distracted by trying to let it get safe.

probably not good for survival rates in general, but I might release it a [00:38:00] bit quicker. 

Ellie: and. Who knows, maybe it'd be even more appreciative of your, yeah, speedy work. Who knows. It's like, so yeah, I'm putting my survival rate, like, not actually that high, but my enthusiasm like way, like has shot up again. So maybe that will, maybe that will keep us safe a bit longer.

Jen: Um, okay, so next challenge, we have got past the Marid, we've got past the guards, we are going in behind the brass door towards the Moon of Saba. So, the first is getting attacked by your worst memories. 

Ellie: Ooh. 

Jen: Which, to be fair, the um, so Asif in this is blaming Amina for everything that's happened to him, and she very quickly realizes that the memory isn't a real memory because that's not how he acted.

And I feel like that's something that at this stage in my life, if I had a memory of something, like a bad memory of something that happened, I would be able to pretty easily tell [00:39:00] if this is a completely catastrophized version of what actually did happen, um, as opposed to the horribleness of the actual event.

Um, so I feel like it'd be easy enough to distinguish that this isn't a real thing. 

Ellie: Mm hmm. 

That we've both gone through enough therapy to, uh. 

Jen: Yeah. 

Ellie: To distinguish between something that feels terrible, and I should take a step back from it and be like, Ah, but this, this is a heightened level of And that is probably a, another like, benefit towards Amina being an older character in this book, that you have that kind of personal growth that makes it more believable that you would actually be able to kind of like see these things, I guess?

Jen: Yeah, you have the maturity to be able to step back and be like, yes, this is a bad thing that happened. Yes, I am wrong. I was wrong for doing these things. Or it's something that I had to do something bad for the right reasons in her, like, which is her case. But. Yeah, the maturity of being able to step back and saying, but that is not, that's not this, that's not what actually happened, and this is a catastrophized [00:40:00] version of what's going on, it's, it's definitely like, it's a maturity thing, it's somebody who's actually spent time being able to go through the things that happened As opposed to just like getting like overwhelmed by them and getting dragged in too much.

So yeah, I feel like that's a, that's a achievable challenge. 

Ellie: I would like to think so 

too. It would heavily depend on how exhausted I am going through the door. If I am fully tired, I am not going to be with it enough to notice that for quite a while I feel like. But if, if I'm not too waterlogged and bashed up and have not to fight too, too hard for my life, then hopefully it is an easy enough enchantment to notice.

I'm also just curious as to what, what memory you would pick. Not, not gonna hash out any of my deepest trauma here right now, you know, but I, I feel like. It's hard to know what that situation would bring out of you, because I feel like that one is looking for one where you feel the, the guilt for the, for the action, or at least I guess in Amina's [00:41:00] case, it was looking for something that would make you feel guilty as opposed to necessarily being your, the lowest point in your life or whatever.

Anyway.

Jen: Yeah. I feel like most people don't have such a, an obvious example as I had to burn my friend at the stake. 

At least I hope most people don't. I would hope most people don't. 

Ellie: Yeah. Same. Same. Same. If you've had to burn your friend at the stake, don't forget you can call. No, never mind. 

Jen: Uh, okay, so after this, there's just having to get through, I 

don't know what you'd call it, like the Hall of Monsters, which is essentially a leap of faith on a beam of sunlight.

And then, everything else kind of works itself out. To be fair. The big fight at the end is a lot of things coming together to work as opposed to a big specific fight. Would I make a leap of faith onto a beam of sunlight across ground that is covered with monsters? To be honest, like, it feels in my head the same as going up one of the tall walls and jumping off at an auto belay and just being like, I'm not gonna die.

I'm [00:42:00] not gonna die. I'm not gonna die. I'm not gonna die. I did successfully do that, but I don't, I 

don't know. 

Ellie: That context gives me more hope for myself because yeah, the idea of jumping out of a beam of sunlight, yeah, no problem. I think it's one of those things where you, you can only approach in the abstract, you can't be like, I'm not letting go of a wall.

It's like, and I'm now going to just descend. I'm not, I'm not just letting go of a wall and trusting machine. I'm just going to go down to the ground now and not think about the process. I, I do worry that amount of. time it would take for me to psych myself up, to not think about just how terrifying the thing would be, would be the cause of my demise. 

Jen: Yeah. 

Yeah. If I, if I was kind of like pushed into it, it'd be like, no, no, no, no, sorry. You need to give me like a good five minutes of deep breathing exercises. 

Ellie: Yeah.

Maybe this is another place for the advantage of having 40 years of swashbuckling experience behind you. Just. Like makes you make the decision straight away and go. But I don't, I don't, I don't, and maybe by that point, if I've seen Marid like come out of [00:43:00] the sea, I've met the Peri, like maybe at that point, I'm willing to just be like, well, feck it, here we go.

Jen: It is what it is.

Ellie: Yeah. I guess I believe in all this 

now. Who knows? 

Jen: Uh, okay. So overall, would we survive this? Would we have survived? 

Ellie: I am gonna. 

Give us a lucky yes.

Jen: Lucky yes. 

Biggest 

luck 

being getting the pirates on our side. 

Ellie: Yeah, for, if it's just the physical challenges, probably. If it's the convincing people to follow us, lower down the list.

Jen: Why can't we just be the lone wolf together? 

Ellie: I feel like it's, it's the first book of a series. It has, like, it's designed to be survivable. 

Jen: Mm. 

Ellie: I 

think we could survive.

Jen: Yeah. 

Yeah. I'd say we survive. Survival rates might go down as the series goes on, but so far, Adventures of Amina al-Sarafi, we've survived this.

Ellie: Nice. Any predictions for the next book? 

Jen: Hmm. 

I'd say the next one, Marjana will play a bigger role. 

Ellie: Yes. 

Jen: Because she's very solidly set up, [00:44:00] but nothing happened with the character. So I'd expect that to be the next big thing to come into it. Other than that, I don't have any, like, core predictions. Oh, this is going to happen.

And I feel like a lot of that has to do with it's all based on, well, it's largely based on mythologies that I don't really know much about. So I can't say like, Oh, well, okay, so they did at one point mentioned the Golden Fleece, but I wouldn't in my head be like, Oh, well, obviously next they're going to do Jason and the Argonauts.

They're going to do such and such. It's kind of like, well, something will happen. 

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. I am really curious about Marjana as well. And whatever like powers she might come into. Hmm. I feel like she's going to be a great like, puzzle maker or solver. Like, I feel like the kind of mentioning at the beginning of her board games and stuff and like her, her weaving abilities might come into play in some other way.

Like she can weave the threads of stories 

Jen: or weave the threads of fate,

Ellie: I don't know. Yeah. Ooh. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And if Marjana isn't explicitly invited [00:45:00] on the next adventure, she will be a stowaway. 

I guess there's kind of the question, can Marjana do that? Because Raksh needs to have a contract to be able to travel on water.

Oh, well, she 

came onto the boat at the end of the book. She's on the boat watching the dolphins and the cat is playing with her, or she's playing with the cat I think.

Jen: Okay, 

so we'll have to assume that doesn't hold true for her. 

Ellie: Yeah. She is partly human, I guess. 

Jen: Yeah, I wonder how much, how much really.

Ellie: I've 

actually forgotten. Yeah, no, Raksh still doesn't know about her at the end of this book. No. 

Jen: Yeah, he's, he's left floating off on a bit of driftwood. 

Ellie: It's both good riddance and I guess I've always, like, the demon characters before have always been so much more intriguing that it's weird to kind of have a demon character that you're kind of like, what?

Jen: Yeah, 

he's definitely not 

the most interesting person there, which is odd, 

Yeah. So 

Ellie: my prediction I think is that we're going to go off on a lot more swashbuckling adventures and the overarching story is going to, or like my, my, my hopes is that it's going to expand into just [00:46:00] as harsh crushing a storyline as the Daevabad trilogy.

Jen: Yeah. 

Awesome. 

Okay. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and you can find us on Instagram at ifwesurvivethis. We are also on threads. 

Ellie: And our next episode will be Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.