A review by ariw
These Infinite Threads by Tahereh Mafi

1.0

Wow — I'd enjoyed the first book fairly well, but this was a terrible follow up. Literally nothing happens. Over 402 pages, the only plot is that

Spoiler

Alizeh arrives with Cyrus at his city, cries a lot, has a bath, changes into a new see-through silk dress to replace her torn see-through silk dress, eats some bread, and has a million conflicting feelings about Cyrus (who is briefly tortured beside her in a random flower field) and argues with him multiple times about marrying or not marrying him (it... varies); Kamran doesn't die, gets changed into a few different outfits in varying shades of blue, yells at his new adviser, yells at his old friend, is locked in a tower, and flies away with a random group of the only named side characters from the previous book on the back of giant birds. Most of this happens in the last 100 pages. The whole thing covers the course of (less than?) a day. Nothing makes any sense, and it's all written in endless florid prose that I ended up having to skim most of (I did go back to check I hadn't missed anything — I really hadn't. Lines like "Were Kamran a different sort of man, he might've acquiesced then to a terrifying compulsion. He felt in that moment nothing greater than an ancient impulse to cry, valiantly resisting the instinct even as a flare of grief tore through him." — literally every line continues like this, as nothing happens, for pages on pages on pages).

Only even writing this now to remind my future self not to bother reading the third book.