Representation: Asian characters
Trigger warnings: Military violence and war themes, near-death experience, physical assault and injury
Score: Six and a half out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.

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? ( )

Yes, wade through the rivers of purple prose with me. Two books in and nary a liberation to be found. The men here are all in-universe handsome and mystified by Alizeh. We’ve got a tortured sad boy who originally wanted to be a magical nun vs conceited narcissist who thinks everyone is beneath him. Alizeh is still unremarkable. She is kindhearted but not much else.

People are always on the brink of death here but never actually dead. Cyrus is strung out akin to a drug addict for Alizeh. If she bats her eyes at him, he loses 75% of control over his entire body. Her putting a hand on his chest had him seconds from exploding.

BUT this book series is entertaining, so who are me to judge? I did rate this lowly due to the sheer repetitiveness of dialogue and character monologue. So much of this filler could’ve and should’ve been cut.

Also,you just know a woman is writing this lol. In Cyrus' deepest desires/wet dreams, he fantasizes about eating Alizeh's kitty poetically so.

Also, I'll scream if Hazan and Cyrus are half-brothers. Please don't redo Shatter Me

2 stars

Cw: Body horror, blood gore, sexual content

This Woven Kingdom Review
These Infinite Threads ( )

Tahereh Mafi is a hit-or-miss author for me, and her This Woven Kingdom series is proving to be the same. I loved the first book but slept through the second one and didn't miss anything doing so. Although I started reading it with trepidation, the third book in the series, ALL THIS TWISTED GLORY, was a pleasant surprise after the snooze fest of a sequel.

ALL THIS TWISTED GLORY finally moves the plot forward in a way the second novel did not. There is some action to spice up the drama. Even better, there are some answers to questions we have had since book one. Ms. Mafi also uses book three to build the scaffolding for future books in the series. In general, there is much better pacing and an actual plot to this third installment, something I feel was sorely missing in the previous one.

This is not to say that ALL THIS TWISTED GLORY did not have issues. It did. My biggest head-scratcher this time is that there is no such thing as a tepid emotional response in any of the characters. Every character's reaction is so extreme and overwrought that it becomes laughable. This is particularly true with three major players, Alizeh, Cyrus, and Kamran. I don't know if my reaction is due to my own cynicism or if others will find the paroxysms of emotion that those three characters experience almost all the time as ridiculous as I did. All I know is that by the end of the book, the highly wrought emotional states of those three had me rolling my eyes so hard they hurt.

I enjoyed ALL THIS TWISTED GLORY enough to want to continue with the series. There are certain events I want to see how they play out. And I definitely want to see Alizeh step up and start calling out the extreme gaslighting almost everyone around her does to her. I also hope that Ms. Mafi plans to end the series sooner rather than later. I don't think I could handle another installment where almost nothing happens. ( )