“She had to accept as fact that sometimes revolution demanded darkness in exchange for light.”

The weird thing about this series is that when you finish a book you just feel like none of your questions were answered and not much happened but somehow you still really enjoyed reading it.

And of course it makes you want to continue reading. This may be a series that is better when you can read each book one right after the other instead of waiting in between for the next book.

I liked this one better than These Infinite Threads and more or equal to This Woven Kingdom. It didn’t feel like the ‘transitional’ book the second book felt like. Even as I was thinking back to what had happened already before I started this third book, it seemed like everything I was remembering happened in the first book. Apparently the second book was a little forgettable to me.


So where are we at with this third installment?

Cyrus, who has some sort of deal with the devil (Iblis) has proposed to Alizeh. The agreement being that she would take over his kingdom and kill him so that he would be free of the devil— although Alizeh is on board with the first part, she has not made up her mind about the second part. Because these two have the hots for each other, obvs.

Cyrus knows he cannot have her which is part of the devil’s torture of him.

Alizeh is struggling to figure out what she is supposed to do next.

“She possessed no throne, no army, no plan, and not an ounce of the powerful magic she’d been promised for the part.”

“It was the kind of contradiction she often felt repeated in herself: that she was both useless and powerful; unimportant and essential.”

Kamran has come to Tulan to avenge his grandfather’s death, aka kill Cyrus. He also must prove his ability to be king of Ardunia as he is coming from his kingdom where Zahhak, the defense minister, is trying to usurp the throne. Kamran is unaware of what has been going on between Cyrus and Alizeh. But there is jealousy and confusion here as he processes that Alizeh did not betray him but may have an attachment to Cyrus.

“without fanfare she’d fallen from the heavens into the still waters of his life, and he wondered, uneasily, whether he’d feel the reverberations of her impact forever.”

Kamran travels with a rag-tag band of characters including Hazan (his right-hand man but more so Alizeh’s right hand man because he is Jinn and loyal to his rightful Queen), Deen (the apothecarist), Huda (the gossiping, unrefined, and illegitimate daughter of an elite family), Omid (the orphan boy who tried to kill Alizeh in the first book but because she saved his life he is loyal to and protective of her: “she’s not magical or anything… we just like her a lot”).

In this book Alizeh ends up almost fatally injured and has to be sent to the Diviners for healing. While that is happening Kamran finds out about the marriage proposal and decides he will marry once Alizeh has been made Queen, given the kingdom and disposed of Cyrus. His marriage to Alizeh should unite the two kingdoms and provide Ardunia with all the resources they need to survive.

By this point the love triangle begins to dissolve and a different enemies-to-lovers side plot starts to form.

The devil’s (unknown) plan seems to be progressing unthwarted as the characters make their decisions.



But what about…?

Unless I missed something, we still don’t really know what’s going on with the devil in general or with his deal with Cyrus. We know it has something to do with his father and possibly his brother (Cyrus was the spare, not the heir… just like Prince Harry…) but we still aren’t given that information.

Kamran’s mother is virtually absent from this book. I know she has to be important but she did not come into play here.

Alizeh’s need for water did not come up at all. Also when she was healed it talked about her not feeling the usual pain that the ice in her veins caused but we never find out how it happened or if it stayed that way or why/if it matters.

The mining of magic was mentioned a little bit as we are introduced to the magic crystals that the Diviners have access to. By the end of the book we know that Alizeh plans to go ‘get her magic’ from the mountains so perhaps this will be more prominent in the next book. We still don’t know fully what Alizeh is capable of.

We know that there is prophecy of the Clay and Fire kingdoms being joined together because it was inscribed on Alizeh’s magic book. But the book also is basically absent from the book. I suspect it will also be more prominent as Alizeh seeks to understand her magic and how she is to save her people.

The fireflies weren’t mentioned again. Maybe I’m making too much of them, but they have to be significant somehow down the road.



Where are we going?

The next book should have a wedding, a quest for magic, some more love stuff, and I suspect an urgency for Alizeh to take her throne before the gathering Jinn revolt or before Ardunia and Tulan enter into war.

Hopefully Mafi gives us more information on the devil, Cyrus’s family, Kamran’s mother, and the prophecy.

We will probably also have more interactions with the Diviners. I liked this bit of wisdom we gained from them in this book:

“Life cannot be experienced one emotion at a time. It is a tapestry of sensation, a braided rope of feeling. We must allow for reflection even when we suffer. We must reach for compassion even when we triumph. If you spend your days waiting for your sorrows to end so that you might finally live you will die an impatient man.”

A woven tapestry is the theme of this series in a lot of ways. We have several threads being used by Mafi as she weaves her story and I hope the masterpiece is worth the wait!



Oh and I’d be cool if there were no more spiders the size of a face.



Recommendation

As mentioned earlier, the magic of this book is that somehow it is still very enjoyable even as not much is happening or being explained. I’m looking forward to the next book but wish I didn’t have to wait so long because the story doesn’t feel memorable enough to stay with me for that long.

If you like YA books with magic, I think this series is worth starting, but just know that you’re in it for the long haul. I’m not sure how many books Mafi plans to write in this series, but it feels like at this rate, it will take several more to get to where we need to go and wrap everything up properly.

I’ve said this with the first two books and I’m saying it again here, my overall opinion of this series cannot fully be formed yet because I have to see where Mafi’s going to go with everything and see if it’s worth the investment, if I’m satisfied with explanations, progressions, and ending.

I will continue to have high hopes. This book offered more than the second so I feel like we’re headed in the right direction! I like that Alizeh’s group of friends is getting more space in the books because it adds a layer of engagement for the reader where we’re not just focused on the romantic love of Cyrus and Alizeh but we get the element of friendship and loyalty.


[Content Advisory: 5 f-words, lustful thoughts as in the previous book and a somewhat graphic sex scene (chapter 14) that is actually a dream]