10 Books Like Amina al-Sirafi After The Tapestry of Fate

If you just tore through The Tapestry of Fate and you're staring at your bookshelf wondering what could possibly fill the Amina-shaped hole in your reading life, I get it. Shannon Chakraborty built something rare with this series: a middle-aged pirate captain navigating the 12th-century Indian Ocean with a crew of misfits, a demon husband she'd rather forget, and enough historical texture to make you forget you're reading fantasy. Book Two ended on a cliffhanger that physically hurt, and Book Three doesn't have a release date yet.

So what do you read in the meantime?

I went looking for books that capture specific pieces of what makes Amina's adventures so hard to put down. Not just "fantasy with boats" (though some of these have boats). I'm talking about the humor threaded through real danger, the found family dynamics, the protagonists who've lived long enough to be tired of everyone's nonsense, and the worlds built on Islamic and Middle Eastern history instead of the same recycled European medieval template.

Here are ten books that kept me reading past midnight for the same reasons Amina did.

1. The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy) by S.A. Chakraborty

If you love: the Islamic mythology, the political intrigue, the world that feels lived-in

This is the obvious pick, and I'm putting it first to get it out of the way. She published the Daevabad books under S.A. Chakraborty, so if you already know them, skip ahead. If you found Chakraborty through Amina, you need to go back.

The Daevabad Trilogy follows Nahri, a con artist in 18th-century Cairo who accidentally summons a djinn warrior and gets pulled into a hidden city of fire and magic. The political layers in Daevabad make Amina's world look simple by comparison. There are factions within factions, centuries-old grudges that drive current policy, and a caste system built on bloodlines that Chakraborty never lets you look away from.

The trilogy gets darker and more complex with each book. The Empire of Gold puts Nahri and Ali on one side of a civil war and Dara on the other, and Chakraborty doesn't flinch from what that costs all three of them.

2. Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

If you love: the seafaring adventure, the humor, the protagonist who figures things out by being clever instead of powerful

Tress is a standalone Cosmere novel about a girl who sets sail across an ocean made of spores to rescue the boy she loves from a sorceress. The tone is lighter than Amina, almost fairy-tale adjacent, but Tress wins through intelligence and stubbornness rather than raw magic. You root for her the same way you root for Amina, because both of them are outmatched and both of them refuse to care.

The narrator (Hoid, for Cosmere readers) gives the whole book a storytelling-around-a-campfire quality that Amina's framing device also uses. Both books feel like someone is telling you a story they love, complete with editorial asides and the occasional exaggeration.

If you want the adventure and the humor without the weight, start here.

3. The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron

Cameron's debut published in 2024, and it's the closest spiritual cousin to Amina I've found. Based on the (possibly legendary) real Jacquotte Delahaye, a woman of color who became one of the few purported female pirate captains in the Caribbean, Cameron builds a historical epic that takes its piracy seriously. The sea is dangerous, the politics are lethal, and survival means making choices that cost something.

Where Amina gives you the Indian Ocean, Jacquotte gives you the Caribbean; where Amina weaves in Islamic mythology, Jacquotte stays grounded in colonial history. Both books center women who command ships in a world that would rather see them dead or invisible. And both authors ground their piracy in the kind of maritime detail (trade winds, ship repairs, port politics) that most fantasy novels don't bother with.

4. The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem

If you love: the Middle Eastern-inspired world, the strong female lead, the slow-burn tension

Sylvia is the heir to a kingdom that was wiped off the map. She's been hiding for a decade, suppressing her magic, working as a nobody in a village that would execute her if they knew what she was. Then she gets caught, and the man who catches her offers a deal instead of a death sentence.

Hashem builds an Egyptian-inspired fantasy world with the kind of specificity that Chakraborty brings to the Indian Ocean. The magic system ties directly to the political conflict, and the central relationship has the same slow-burn friction as Amina and Raksh, where you can't tell if these two people are going to save each other or destroy each other.

The sequel, The Jasad Crown, closes out the duology and answers the question decisively.

5. The Serpent Sea (The Books of the Raksura) by Martha Wells

Martha Wells is better known for Murderbot these days, but the Raksura series deserves the same attention. Moon is a shapeshifter who has spent his life as an outsider, moving between communities that don't want him. When he finally finds others like him, he has to learn how to belong to a group after years of surviving alone.

Moon's court of Raksura operates like Amina's ship. They argue, protect each other, and function as a family even when half of them want to throw the other half overboard. By The Serpent Sea, you know the court well enough that when someone takes a risk, you feel it the way you feel it when Dalila or Tinbu are in danger on the Marawati.

I'm recommending The Serpent Sea (Book Two) specifically because it's the one with the epic voyage (flying ships crossing the Serpent Sea in search of a stolen heartstone) and the full crew dynamics on display, but start with The Cloud Roads if you want the full experience.

6. The Spice Road by Maiya Ibrahim

Imani lives in a hidden community in the desert where people draw magic from spices. When her brother disappears into the outside world, she goes after him, and the journey forces her to confront everything she thought she knew about her home.

Ibrahim builds a pre-colonial Arabian-inspired world where the magic grows out of the culture instead of being bolted on from a European template. Imani's affinity for iron makes her one of Qalia's best Shield warriors, and the djinni who joins her quest, Qayn, has his own agenda that complicates everything, the same way Raksh does for Amina.

The book is YA, which means it moves faster and the stakes are more personal than political. If that's a dealbreaker, skip to the next entry.

7. The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

If you love: the mystery layered into the fantasy, the sharp banter, the world that rewards paying attention

This one shows up on every Goodreads "readers also enjoyed" list for Amina, and after reading it, I understand why. The Tainted Cup is a murder mystery set in a fantasy world where a dead Imperial officer has a tree growing out of his body, and a brilliant, eccentric investigator named Ana Dolabra has to solve the case without leaving her house.

You believe she's the smartest person in the room because Bennett shows you her thinking, not just her conclusions.

The sequel, A Drop of Corruption, deepens the mystery and widens the world. The third book, A Trade of Blood, drops in August, and each installment has used its murder case to dissect a different layer of how the empire actually works.

8. The Drowning Empire by Andrea Stewart

Stewart's trilogy (starting with The Bone Shard Daughter) is set on an island empire where the emperor harvests bone shards from his citizens' skulls to power the magical constructs that enforce his rule. The story splits across multiple POVs, but the two that matter most here are Lin, the emperor's daughter trying to prove she deserves to inherit, and Jovis, a smuggler sailing between islands searching for his missing wife.

Jovis is the Amina parallel. He's a sailor with a complicated past, a talent for getting into trouble, and a found family that assembles around him whether he wants it or not. His chapters move like Amina's best sequences, bouncing from island to island, solving problems through cleverness and chaos, and leaving with more questions than answers.

All three books are out, so you can read straight through without waiting.

9. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

If you love: the older protagonist, the found family, the warmth underneath the danger

This is the wildcard pick. Legends & Lattes has no pirates, no ocean, no Islamic mythology. Viv is a retired orc barbarian who opens a coffee shop, and that's the entire plot.

So why is it here? Viv spends the whole book choosing not to solve problems with the sword she carried for 22 years, building a new crew instead: a barista, a baker, a handful of regulars who become family without anyone planning it. When an old rival tips off the local crime boss about the artifact behind her shop's luck, Viv has to choose the coffee over the sword, and Amina makes the same calculation every time Marjana's safety is on the line.

Legends & Lattes lives in the space between Amina's action sequences, the moments where she thinks about her daughter, worries about her crew, or wonders if she's too old for this. If that's what draws you to the series, this is your book.

Baldree followed it up with Bookshops & Bonedust (a prequel) and Brigands & Breadknives. Both are worth your time.

10. Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

Two half-sisters, separated for years. Joanna guards a collection of magical books in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to their protection while Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica, as far from magic as she can get. When their father is killed by a book, the secrets he kept start spilling out.

You learn the Kalotay family history through the way Joanna locks her own mother out of the house every night and the postcards Esther sends from the bottom of the world. The world-building reveals itself through what these two women do, not through anyone explaining it. The magic is blood-based: Scribes write spells into existence using their own blood, and the books they create can let you walk through walls or manipulate the elements.

This is the pick for readers who love Amina's literary side, the kind of book where every detail about Joanna's isolated routine in that Vermont house tells you something about the family she's trying to hold together and the one she's already lost.

Where to Start

If I had to pick one book from this list to hand to someone walking out of The Tapestry of Fate, it would be The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye. It's the closest in spirit, setting type, and the specific thrill of watching a woman captain a ship through a world that was never built for her.

But if you haven't read the Daevabad Trilogy, start there. Chakraborty sharpened every tool she later brought to Amina in those three books, and you'll finish them understanding why the Amina series hits the way it does.

If you want more lists like this one, the Dungeon Crawler Carl list takes the same deep-dive approach for LitRPG readers.

And if you've read everything on this list and you're still hungry, the good news is The Tapestry of Fate ends on a cliffhanger. Book Three is coming. Chakraborty hasn't abandoned Amina on that island.

Neither should you.