There are many myths featuring women and threads of fate, but what if there were a woman who used her magic and talent with weaving to control everyone around her?
Amina and her crew have only been home a few months when Khayzur shows up and informs Amina she and her crew have to collect a spindle with the power to spin a new fate. While there, he smells Raksh and grows suspicious, although Raksh hasn’t ever been to Amina’s home. Amina is afraid Khayzur smells Marjhana, whose magic appears to be growing. Desperate to keep her daughter’s secret safe, she firmly denies Raksh has ever been to her home, then changes the subject.
Marjhana is approaching puberty and starting to realize she’s different from everyone else, though she’s not sure how. Amina tells her it’s just part of becoming a woman, but Marjhana is no idiot. Afraid knowing the truth will put her daughter in more danger, Amina tells her it’s just puberty. That’s definitely going to bite her in the ass in the next book, right?
Also, if Marjhana is approaching puberty, why did the audiobook narrator use the voice of a small child for her dialogue?
Unbeknownst to Amina, her family has started to make plans to move them off the island where she has secreted them away. Marjhana is suffocating and Amina is the only one who refuses to see it. Her brother buys them a house in a town not far away, and Amina doesn’t know how to explain to them why that’s a bad idea. They (quite reasonably) can’t see why they should be cooped up on a deserted island while she gets to go off on adventures around the world.
Amina doesn’t have time to resolve this dispute with her family before she has to head out on her next adventure. She doesn’t feel good about leaving her family on bad terms, but she doesn’t have much choice.
So out they go with very little information as to what they’re going up against. They’re told someone named Queen Lab has possession of a magic spindle with the power to control people, and that she’s not to be trusted for some unclear reason.
To find out more about Queen Lab, they decide to pay a visit to Jamal who has been living in Baghdad to study.
Before they reach Baghdad, they discover a stowaway: Marjhana. Like mother, like daughter.
In Baghdad, Jamal gives them a rundown on various stories surrounding Queen Lab. There are a lot, but a common thread is that men who find their way to her island don’t find their way out.
That all changed when a cast-away turned up, claiming to have been to Queen Lab’s island, where there are riches beyond imagining.
Of course that got the attention of a certain husband of Amina’s, so now Khayzur and his ilk want Amina to go get the spindle before Raksh has the chance to do real harm.
Amina leaves Marjhana with Jamal, making him promise to get her back home if Amina doesn’t return in six months.
So, off they go. But before they can get to Queen Lab’s island, Dahlila has to go and get herself kidnapped by the poisoners who taught her everything. So they have to make a detour to rescue Dahlila, who is less than grateful for the assistance.
They manage to save Dahlila, though not without taking some damage along the way.
Shortly after rescuing Dahlila, they notice the stars seem to have rearranged themselves. They can’t find any constellations, which means they have no idea where they are or how to get home. Then a storm comes along and takes off their mast, killing six of their people before sweeping the ship and its survivors onto the beach of an island.
Sure enough, it’s none other than Queen Lab’s island.
At first, everyone seems very friendly and welcoming, which is weird, right?
Of course, Amina does her best to make friends with Lab so she can steal the spindle, but, twist of twists! It’s Dahlila who succeeds!
While they are both vying for the queen’s affection, Dahlila confesses to Amina that Amina has been poisoned and Dahlila may or may not be able to find an antidote.
Since they left the island of poisoners, Dahlila has been giving Amina a foul potion on a daily basis, ostensibly to help with her injuries. But her injuries aren’t healing, which is very odd for someone with Amina’s magical abilities.
On the other hand, her magical abilities have probably helped her survive the poison this long.
Amina is understandably pissed that Dahlila kept this information from her for so long. She could have returned home and had a chance to say goodbye to her family.
Dahlila figured, with enough time, she could figure out an antidote. But, as usual, Amina is too stubborn.
I kind of love that about this friendship. Yes, Dahlila crossed a line and I totally get why Amina doesn’t want to talk to her for a while.
On the other hand, it’s easy to see that Dahlila and Amina are cut from the same cloth. They’re both smart, independent, adventurous, morally ambiguous people and I love them both for it. No wonder they became friends.
And it’s equally understandable how those same qualities led to the two of them butting heads.
Not only is Amina not talking to Dahlila, but Raksh has turned up with another band of pirates and revealed to Lab Amina’s true nature: she’s a pirate and a thief.
Lab still doesn’t know that Amina is there to steal the spindle, but she doesn’t trust Amina, and she tests Amina’s loyalty and magical powers by throwing her knife into a griffin’s nest and ordering her to retrieve it by sundown.
Amina succeeds, but just barely, and only by slaughtering several griffins who were just trying to protect their babies. She does not feel good about it.
After her success with the griffins, Lab lets Raksh stay in Amina’s room with her, but something is off about him. Sex with him isn’t as much fun as it used to be and he doesn’t seem to remember parts of their shared past, so of course Amina doesn’t trust him.
While he sleeps, she explores the palace and finds a maze of catacombs seeming to contain as many corpses and skeletons as there are people living on the island.
She also finds people washing, dying, and spinning wool into yarn and weaving it into a giant tapestry.
Based on what she’s been told about the spindle, she figures this tapestry must have something to do with the weird stuff she’s been seeing around the island, but she has no idea how it works.
But she’s magic, right? So she cuts off all her hair and starts incorporating it into the tapestry, just to see what will happen.
When everything comes to light, it turns out Lab was weaving shrouds that, when placed on a corpse, kept them alive, but as a kind of zombie, unable to resist her commands or have any agency of their own. It’s a nightmare and everyone on the island is subjected to it.
So, of course Amina is scared for her friend when she realizes Dahlila is getting close to Lab and even converting to their religion, which doesn’t sound at all like Dahlila who has always held firm to her Christian faith despite all the poisoning.
But Dahlila is not ignorant. She knows exactly what’s going on and she’s doing her best to get close enough to Lab to get a chance at grabbing the spindle.
Finally, there’s an altercation between Lab, Amina, and Dahlila. Dahlila stabs Lab with a mystical knife that can kill magical creatures like Raksh. She uses it on Lab, but as she’s dying, Lab slips the spindle from her pocket and into Dahlila’s hand.
Dahlila drops it like a hot potato, knowing what Lab is doing, but it’s too late. A moment of contact was all that was required for Lab’s spirit to travel from the spindle and take over Dahlila’s body.
Dahlila resists, of course, but her will is no match for a magical being that’s been around for thousands of years. Her last words to Amina are to get Raksh, so that’s what she does.
I forgot to mention that by this point it’s been revealed that the Raksh Amina has been living with all this time isn’t the real Raksh, but a construct with some (but not all) of his memories.
The real Raksh is still in prison, so Amina runs to get him. It turns out he’s the only one who can destroy the spindle, so he does, freeing Dahlila in the process.
What stuck out to me in that fight was that Raksh mocked the spindle for being so young. The spindle is thousands of years old. If Raksh considers that young, how old is he? WTF is he?
I hope we get answers in the next book.
It turned out Lab’s magic had been keeping Amina from her crew while they repaired the ship. Every time she tried to return to the ship, she ended up going in circles despite being sure of her direction. Meanwhile, the crew searched for her and Dahlila but found only a deserted island.
Although Amina could swear they had only been on the island a couple of months, her crew informs her it’s been eight months.
And when they finally return home, they find it was even longer away from the island: they’ve been gone for ten years…
This sequel did not disappoint and I can’t wait for book 3!