A review by lawbooks600
All This Twisted Glory by Tahereh Mafi

adventurous dark 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? Yes

4.0

Representation: Asian characters
Score: Six and a half out of ten.

Is it me or am I enjoying the This Woven Kingdom series less and less? I waited for months to get All This Twisted Glory by Tahereh Mafi after enjoying This Woven Kingdom and These Infinite Threads, and I picked it up at a library when they got it. I glanced at the intriguing blurb, but when I closed the final page, it was okay.

It starts (more like continues) with Cyrus and Alizeh living separate lives, as the former is in a torture chamber for most of the narrative and Alizeh in another location, presumably a kingdom full of jinn. Like the previous two instalments, All This Twisted Glory has a slow burn style of pacing, but it is  barely below 400 pages, compared to the 500 and above 400 page lengths of the works that came before it. The slow burn only works to advance the existing relationship between Alizeh and Cyrus, but when Mafi only focuses on that, she misses the opportunity to put in more subplots to take a break from the central storyline. I started to disconnect from them because of the minimal character development since they were in the same state as the last part.

Mafi established the worldbuilding already in This Woven Kingdom, so I can't say anything about that, but the world remains the same, with no further expansion. Why is this? I'm not sure. The antagonist, Iblees, is mostly in the background, and I don't see much of the side characters like Prince Kamran until the concluding pages. The pacing only picks up from there as there is a battle scene, resulting in a heartstopping conclusion. That begs the question: when will this series end? Initially, I thought the series was a trilogy, but now the front cover says it's the third book. Now, there's a possibility of a fourth and even a fifth part, which makes me feel it might get boring to read over time if the quality doesn't improve. When does the next one come out?
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