Recced by half my friends, I think, and I enjoyed it, but I wish I loved it more than I did.

The story follows a middle-aged former pirate who comes out of retirement for one last job, and then sails all kinds of shenanigans out of myth and magic. The main character is the kind of cranky that's a lot of fun, I liked the crew of misfits she gathered around her, and the easy inclusion of varying religions, races and forms of queerness. It was maybe a bit to pirate utopia, but it's meant to be escapist fun, so whatever. It was also nice to have a hero who wasn't nineteen, and had a bad knee, and was getting very sick of dealing with people's shit. The adventures could be a bit videogame plot, but came together in the end, and it has a pleasing number of tall ships.

Where it fell down for me was a feeling of wallpaper historicity: other than the piracy, you could've transported any of these characters to the present day New York City, with no particular change in morality or outlook. Chakraborty mentions in her author's notes that she wanted the story to be historically plausible (plus or minus the magic), and the level of detail in her research is great, but I felt like she was trying too hard to make everyone relatable, and it didn't end up working for me. It also felt a little on the nose for me talking directly to the reader about how often literature distorts women's stories; which point I feel like we'd get just reading the darn book. The audiobook also had a bit more Acting than I prefer.

First in a series, and I probably will read the next one.