Reviews with content warning for Blood - These Infinite Threads

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These Infinite Threads by Tahereh Mafi

14 reviews

milzy_23's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Team Cyrus

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manaledi's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book suffered from classic middle of a trilogy syndrome in setting up the drama to come. I didn't remember much of book one, so some of the context and stress points were missing. As usual, I'm unconvinced by the burgeoning love triangle, but I understand it as a plot point.

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ruby_12's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This book was pretty good for a sequel. The world building of tulan was at a degree and the aftermath of the events in the first was written well at a moderate pace. The change in character mindsets and personality was properly justified and relevant to the ongoing story. The plot twists and revelations were actually done great. It was unpredictable and rightfully changed the course of the story.

The platonic relationships and the romance was when the author peeked. The povs of the characters during this, the dialouge was all written so beautifully. The backstories and the pasts were well thought out. The last few chapters set a good plot for the next book and leaves the reader thinking of all possibilities to the next story.

Overall, this was a good sequel. I’ve only given it this rating because it’s a sequel and the remaining story is still left. This book deserves praise but there’s a lot more the reader is yet to see, and that’s reserved for the third book.
This current book was one of the author’s better works. It goes to show how the story matters more than the length. I hope we get to see more of this in the next book.

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wildflowerleahg's review against another edition

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3.0

I’m just saying Peeta Mellark would answer all your questions ESPECIALLY WHAT IS HIS FAVORITE COLOR.

This book was really just two men screaming at a traumatized girl to marry them, and being upset when she rejects them.

As a plot girlie, a book being just vibes no thoughts is sometimes but I just felt like we were having the same two conversations over and over and over… the first book set up this exciting world and we explored NONE OF IT other than the Bella swan flower field.

What saved me was the writing. The story itself, pretty good. I’m still wanting to finish this series but overall this suffers from classic middle book syndrome.

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lawbooks600's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Representation: Asian characters
Score: Seven points out of ten.

Before I begin, I must say something: the third book is next year? It better be good. Now then, it's been months since I read the first instalment, This Woven Kingdom, and I loved it so much, so I went into this one with high expectations. Honestly, I thought the second part of the series was a minor downgrade, and the first one is better. It starts (or rather continues) with the main character, Alizeh Huda, or Alizeh for short, and the book picks up right off from This Woven Kingdom with an action-packed beginning from the previous ending. The book slowed its pace from here, but that allowed me to explore the character dynamics with Alizeh, Cyrus and Kamran, and the multiple POVs also helped. Alizeh further develops a romantic relationship with Cyrus, which spans throughout most of the narrative, which left nothing much else happening. If it weren't for the romance, I would've given this three stars instead of four. Still, I hope the third book would be an improvement over the second, or even as good or better than the first novel.

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sandwiiche's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

a fun read, but tbh the plot didn't really advance much??? i am even more confused and i have too many questions still

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braveprincess11's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

She’d risen up from dust, come to life on a breeze, and left a trail of perfumed flowers in her wake as she ushered in the fall of a king who’d ruled the greatest empire on earth for nearly a century. The true wonder was how she’d done it. Without lifting a finger— without even raising her voice—
She’d simply stood tall, and his world had collapsed.

Once again, Tahereh Mafi has managed to create a vivid, beautiful picture with the most elegant, lyrical prose. The entire book takes place in a single day, but the way that she writes, you find yourself constantly forgetting that so little time is passing, and that so little time has passed since the end of This Woven Kingdom.

Cyrus and Alizeh manage to develop their relationship, and Cyrus showcase his humanity, in a way that is simultaneously fantastical and entirely realistic. Despite the book taking place in less than 24 hours, the growth of their relationship and tentative trust in one another and themselves grows so gradually and fully that it wrenched my heart right from my chest. The language Mafi uses when Cyrus is expressing his fondness for Alizeh — it manages to be subtle and lyrical and sensual, while also just being absolutely gorgeous writing. Their grip on lyrical prose will never cease to amaze me.

Mafi’s choice to have Alizeh step out from behind the door to face Cyrus’s mother, and then have the chapter end and cut to Kamran in the tower… I don’t think I will ever recover from that. And the deliberate parallel between Alizeh falling from the dragon’s back at the end of This Woven Kingdom and this book ending with Kamran, Hazan and their ragtag group of rescuers ascending into the sky on the backs of Simorgh and her children… some of the most beautiful writing that I’ve encountered this year, if not ever.

I’m already waiting with bated breath, on pins & needles for the release of All This Twisted Glory in February

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snowwhitehatesapples's review against another edition

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tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

Also on Snow White Hates Apples.

In all my years, I’ve never read a sequel as useless as this one because I kid you not, there was only 1% plot. ONE SINGULAR PERCENT PLOT.

At the end of This Woven Kingdom, we witness Kamran having his showdown with Cyrus and Alizeh getting kidnapped by Iblees via dragon. These Infinite Threads continues the story from that point and in a little more than 400 pages, only moved the plot forward by one tiny. little. centimetre.

Alizeh’s perspective in this sequel is legit, a 99% pointless and incredibly juvenile back-and-forth with Cyrus within the timespan of like, 2 days. Plus, with the frequency of this spineless, whiny special snowflake of a damsel in distress uttering “how dare you”, you could have yourself a ‘drink a shot’ challenge and get yourself super drunk.

Here are the 7 “how dare you”s I noted in this book (there’s one more by Miss Huda but I’ll leave that out):

“How dare you,” she said. “You horrible cretin. You useless monster. How could you—” (Page 4)
“How dare you.” (Page 33)
“How dare you,” she said, her fists clenching. “How dare you slander my person when you know nothing about me—” (Page 102)
“How dare you,” she whispered. (Page 165)
“How dare you,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, her fists clenching. “I am not pathetic—” (Page 235)
“I certainly will not listen to you— And how dare you call me stupid and infuriating—” (Page 237)
She gasped. “I am not a demented Jinn, how dare you—” (Page 357).

Anyway, the remaining 1% in Alizeh’s POV isn’t even the plot. It’s just revelations explaining why Cyrus did what he did and a little more on Alizeh’s identity as a Jinn. So yeah, basically nothing happened in the 200+ pages of her POV. The story didn’t move forward, there was no character development — in fact, all I saw was character deterioration. And God, the romance was disgusting (not saying the one she had with Kamran wasn’t problematic). I don’t know how anyone could think someone cleaning blood off another’s face with their tears could be a touching, much less swoon-worthy act cause this is ‘bombastic side eye, criminal offensive side eye' territory.

The actual aforementioned 1% plot happened in Kamran’s POV where the story blessedly moved forward. Even more astonishing is that character development happened for Kamran! He’s no longer the complete asshole he was and he even became more mature. I couldn’t see why some reviewers said he was annoying since he’s the sole reason I continued reading this sequel instead of DNFing it (and also the sole cause of the singular star I’m rating this sequel). Seriously, Alizeh was just so irritating, so sickening, so ‘oh-woe-is-me‘ despite how she could’ve saved herself with how OP she is. It was such a chore reading her perspective that I skipped chunks and chunks and chunks of non-dialogue, repetitive, navel-gazing paragraphs.

Also, I didn’t think it was possible but the purple prose got even more purple than the first book — and at this point, it’s no longer bearable. It’s simply obnoxious, pretentious and wasteful. Everything in this book could’ve happened in less than 200 pages, maybe even within 100 pages!

As much as I like Kamran now, I’m not going to bother picking up the next book just to find out what happens. Alizeh is too major ick for me to handle.

Thank you so much Pansing for sending me a copy of this in exchange for an honest review! These Infinite Threads by Tahereh Mafi is available at all good bookstores.

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leacallida's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

C’était très intense, comme Tahereh Mafi sait très bien écrire ses livres, notamment dans les relations entre personnages, mais au-delà de ça… j’ai un peu eu l’impression qu’il ne se passait pas grand-chose pendant 400 pages. J’ai l’impression que c’est un peu un tome « transitoire », donc j’ai hâte de voir ce que le prochain réserve !

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sam_wal's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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