This was really a book of two parts, which could have worked better if they were better balanced. The first part was the story in which the titular Amina Al-Sirafi, a retired pirate captain, has her arm twisted into taking one last job, for which she must get the old team back together. One of the points of this narrative is to explore the nature of parenthood, aging, retirement, and one's legacy (especially since piracy was bunch of fun and a bit of a wrench to give up). In this part of the story, there was an awful lot of navel gazing and conversations about how different members of the old crew were approaching these issues. Intellectually, I appreciate what Chakraborty was doing, but boy did it slow down the plot. She writes a ripping good yarn, but she doesn't really have the subtlety of touch to engage with these issues in a way that doesn't feel heavy handed or clumsy (much like her commentary on gender roles, slavery, queerness and other ways to put socially acceptable progressive values into the worldview of a 12th century Arab lady pirate captain). 

However, once the adventure is properly assembled, with supernatural creatures and settings in place and playing their respective roles, things picked up a lot. Wonderful descriptions of all of magical mysteries and settings and discoveries and objects and lore. Raksh was a great source of unpredictability as events unfolded. So I liked the book better by the end than I did at the beginning, but I worry that future installments wiill make the same mistake, and waste wordcount on pseudo-profound attempts at thoughtful navel-gazing, when I just want to watch some marids throw their tentacles around.