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.