shifu (hiatus)'s Reviews > This Woven Kingdom

୧ ‧₊˚ ⚔️ 3 "you-were-good-i-was-waiting-for-you-to-be-great" stars

one thing i've noticed about tahereh mafi is that her real strength as a writer lies in her characters. i enjoy the plots of her books—they’re well-written and engaging enough, though not exactly groundbreaking. but it's really her characters that stand out. i think that’s why, even though i liked the book, i didn’t end up loving it.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ the plot ꒱ ˎˊ˗

i love mythologies and folklore-type stories, so naturally, i loved the plot. it was interesting, and i liked the overall setting. however, after a captivating start where we learned about the world and the mc's past, things slowed down a lot. for about 150 pages, not much really happened. it wasn’t boring exactly, but the story didn’t seem to be moving forward. smh 😒

and then the story took a turn in the last 100 pages or so. there was so much stuff going on at once, it was just one thing after the other . talk about a wild ride.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ the characters ꒱ ˎˊ˗

➸ alizeh:

i absolutely adored her character. she is kind, resourceful, can kill you in the blink of an eye but will choose compassion everytime 😭😭😭. and she has suffered sm my girlll i wanted to give her the biggest hug ever.

➸ kamran:

and here in lies my biggest critique of this book: kamran. i did not like his character at all. he has been blessed with everything a person could want in life but he doesn't appreciate any of it. he looks down upon people around him all the time, may it be his friend, family, the ministers, the king, hell even his own freaking mother. and don't even get me started on how he talks about the women around him. according to him, every female creature around him wants to marry him and is incapable to stringing two words together. cool 🤡🤡.

and all his feelings for alizeh seem to stem from the fact that she doesn't fall upon his preconceived notions about people. ugh.

➸ cyrus:

watch tahereh mafi single handedly destroy my "i-want-a-dark-haired-man" agenda. first aaron, now cyrus? 😭 his character has me so intrigued.

my man has dragons + can do magic + is infamous as hell + committed patricide + can banter with the fmc 🤸🏻‍♀️ need i say more?

˗ˏˋ ꒰ the romance ꒱ ˎˊ˗

the way the romance is written is good enough. but i wasn't a fan of alizeh and kamran's relationship because, for me, there didn't seem to be any real feelings involved. there was lust and attraction, yes. but they didn't even know anything about each other as actual people. and there is a huge difference between feeling true emotions for someone and liking someone for who they are vs. being attracted to someone.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ bottom line ꒱ ˎˊ˗

a good story that fell short for me only because of the mmc and it's slow pace at times. but i'm still going to continue the series because:
- i want to see alizeh get everything good in life
- i want to see more alizehcyrus dynamics
- the story is so interesting