Marianne Gordon

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty. Warning, spoilers! This book was a delight from start to finish, I had so much fun reading it. It's a swashbuckling romp that completely took me out of myself; I haven't felt such a feeling of complete escapism in ages, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's fast and it's vibrant, a high seas adventure which reminded me of how it felt to watch old films like Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.  Amina Al-Sirafi is a tough, no-nonsense ex-pirate with a moral code and a tongue sharp as steel who has been cajoled into one last adventure over the high seas. She faces down sorcerers, leviathans, and demi-god ex-husbands who have amazing backsides. Her thirst for adventure and the horizon made me wish I could get up and go exploring too. Even so, Amina Al-Sirafi's internal struggles between returning to her ship - to the love of her life, the sea - and remaining safe a

So I have decided to start a blog. I am still unsure what I'll actually write about, in all likelihood it will just be reviews of books I've enjoyed, lots of very self-indulgent random ramblings, and perhaps some short stories. I've had it in the back of my head to start a blog since I was a kid, and realised I had a WordPress account I never used from the early 2010s...  I thought about naming some top fives - top five books, top five songs, recipes, etc - by way of somewhere to start. However, I ended up sitting for about an hour staring dejectedly at five empty bulletpoints, trying desperately to rifle through memories of suddenly elusive titles - had I ever actually read anything, had it all been a dream? - that I thought I'd just name some favourites for the day. So today's favourite book: The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty. Kraken, djinn, hairy legs and lots of swearing, if I could join this pirate crew I would in a heartbeat. I've j