For young adult readers: An adventure-packed reimagination of the legendary sailor Sinbad

The world was ending. Or so he thought.

Be patient. Breathe. He reminded himself.

That’s what usually happens when you raise the devil from hell. The world ends.

Be patient. Breathe.

Sinbad struggled to take in air and felt weak as if a heavy weight was bearing down on him. His pupils were dilated, and he could hear blood coursing through his veins. It was like a raging river cutting through a narrow ravine in the mountains of the north. The sound was deafening, and it terrified him.

Lying on the ground, Sinbad was unable to move. His head was spinning, and his vision was blurred. He could hear his crew shouting and yelling in a frenzy of madness. They had lost, and he couldn’t accept it. He had lost. It had all happened so quickly. Iblis, the mighty devil, had been raised...everything was falling apart.

Sinbad swallowed a lump and stared at the ground for what seemed like ages. Then, the blurriness in his sight cleared, and he saw someone approaching him.

“SINBAD! SINBAD!”

Lost in trauma, Sinbad couldn’t make out who it was. The person almost resembled Safeena, the love of his life. “Sinbad! Sinbad! Are you okay?”

Just then, a strong slap surged through the air and hit his cheeks, ringing in his ears. His skin vibrated, and his muscles contracted as he came back to the chaotic present.

He looked around and saw that it was Pressa. The same Chinese crewmate who liked to bully, push, shove and throw loud words at you when she thought you’d gone “soft:.

“Look at me! Snap out of it, Sinbad!” she screamed. “YOU MAD BOY!”

Sinbad blinked hard, looked at her; he nodded, trying to regain his composure. He remembered the moments before he had landed here: they had entered the tomb of Alexander. The devil had risen. Iblis had taken his daughter, Safeena with him.

Safeena, the love of Sinbad’s life, had lost all memory due to the deal he had made with the god Anansi. It was a simple pact: the African god would help Sinbad find the legendary crypt of the emperor, in turn, Safeena, the devil’s daughter, would forget her lover. And if he wanted her to regain her memory, Sinbad would need to release the sociopathic god from the glass jar where he’d been held captive.

But I can’t . . . Anansi is the god of chaos . . . of spiders and trickery. Sinbad thought, feeling defeated.

Safeena, the beautiful, innocent daughter of Iblis, born from his limb, was the girl with cat eyes. She was a good soul, nothing like her father. She wanted the best for the world and sought to save it rather than destroy it. One by one, all the memories of the incidents came rushing back, including the realization that Fatima, his supposed mother, the red-haired horror, and the devil’s right-hand, was still alive. After all, he had thought his parents were dead.

But why has she joined Iblis?

Nothing made sense to him. He couldn’t believe that two of the most precious people in the world, the ones who should have been with him, were on Iblis’s side. And here he was, in the midst of chaos.

“Why did Safeena leave us like this? What happened to her? Something doesn’t sit right,” Markus seemed to be asking the group loudly. Sinbad bit his quivering lip.

It was Markus, the tall, muscular man with a scar running down the left side of his face, who had trusted Sinbad and allowed him to use Anansi’s realm to get the location of the tomb. Sinbad knew he had to come clean and confess that he had made a foolish deal with Anansi, despite Markus warning him not to fall for the spider’s tricks. Sinbad had thought he was clever enough not to be tricked, but he was wrong. Now, he had lost everything – his love, his parents, and his world had crumbled. As he looked at his crew, he saw them looking around, scared, jumping, and hollering.

“All right, shut up everyone!” It was Idris, his second-in-command. The purple, frizzy-haired seid had rebelled against her own people because she’d fallen in love with a vampire – a mortal enemy of monster hunters. Idris had become part of Sinbad’s crew reluctantly, but now she was more than just a crewmate. She was a friend.

“I’ve had enough,” she exclaimed “We really need to calm down. Look around you. Nothing has happened. We are still here. Breathing. Alive.” The crew and the soldiers of By Fate and Fortune stopped in their tracks. They looked at each other. Idris stood solemnly, waiting for someone else to start hollering again, but no one did.

“Great. Thank you, everyone. The sun is still bright, the clouds look fine, and we’re all alive. Let’s figure out how to get out of this one, shall we?” Idris spoke slowly, in a level tone, as she looked at Sinbad for answers, earnestly.

Sinbad licked his lips, and his long, flowing robe swayed as he shifted his weight, but no words came out. Markus asked again, this time in a quiet voice, “What happened with Safeena? Did she backstab us?”

After a pause, Sinbad finally spoke. “No . . . she didn’t.”

Husayn, Sinbad’s best friend, was pacing back and forth, his curly hair tousled from his restless movements.

“Then what?” he asked, his voice rising with each word. “What happened to her? Why did she just leave with him?” His dark eyes were wide with fear, and he was struggling to catch his breath, as if on the brink of a panic attack.

Sinbad mustered the courage to answer. Here we go...

Excerpted with permission from Sinbad and the Rise of Iblis, Kevin Missal, Penguin India.