Key Details
- Read by: Kate Reading voices both halves of the split narration, Alizeh's chapters and Kamran's.
- At its heart: enemies-to-lovers, inherited destiny, captivity and political leverage
- Vibe: Simmering and unresolved
- Short version: Worth it if This Woven Kingdom's slow burn hooked you; skip if its wordiness already tested your patience.
Tahereh Mafi asks a lot of patience from readers who came to This Woven Kingdom for magic and stayed for the slow burn between Alizeh and Kamran, and the These Infinite Threads audiobook is where that patience gets tested for real. This is book two of a series still very much mid-sentence: the story opens moments after Kamran's grandfather is killed at Cyrus's hand and Alizeh is carried off to Tulan, the neighboring kingdom Cyrus rules. Kate Reading returns to narrate a cast split across two courts, a jinn heir who insists she does not want the throne several hundred pages keep insisting is hers, and a human crown prince forced to question everything he was raised to believe about the people his empire has subjugated. Five reviews sit behind this listing, and together they read less like a consensus than an argument in progress.
First, the Big Picture
The five reviews split almost evenly on the one question that defines this entry: how much plot These Infinite Threads is actually willing to deliver. One reviewer calls it 'classic book two,' the kind that mostly rearranges its characters rather than advancing them, and says so approvingly, adding that it never felt slow-paced despite that description. A second reviewer, writing under the name K@yLei9H, is fonder of Mafi's prose than of the plotting here, noting the story seems to cover no more than a day or two of in-world time and that splitting the point of view between Alizeh and Kamran works against Kamran specifically, whose chapters they found harder to connect with. A third review, from someone who came to the series already lukewarm on Mafi's writing after finishing the Shatter Me books, is blunter still: the wordiness that bothered them in This Woven Kingdom, they write, has been 'dialed up to 11' here.
Do the arithmetic on the five ratings behind the 4.4 badge and the numbers land exactly where that split suggests. The five scores sum to 22 of a possible 25 points, three shy of a unanimous five-star sweep, room enough for the one three-star holdout alongside three enthusiastic fives and a four-star review sitting in between. That is not a book listeners are failing to agree on so much as one they are agreeing to disagree about, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, and the reviews make clear that where you land depends heavily on how invested you already were in Cyrus before this installment opened. The synopsis leads with the claim that this is an instant number one New York Times bestseller, which tracks with the sheer volume of enthusiasm in these reviews even where the enthusiasm comes tangled up with real complaints.
The Best Parts of These Infinite Threads
One reason multiple reviewers keep circling back despite their complaints has a name: Cyrus, the ruler of Tulan who has taken Alizeh captive and bound himself to a bargain with the devil in the process. Both the reviewer called Orinta and the one writing as K@yLei9H single him out unprompted, one wanting more page time for him and the other outright asking for it, and the plot keeps that appetite dangling by leaving Cyrus's own deal with Iblees unresolved heading into whatever comes next. Reviewer Emmy puts it most simply, saying Mafi's name on the cover is reason enough to pick up anything published next.
The publisher markets Mafi alongside Sarah J. Maas, Leigh Bardugo, and Sabaa Tahir, and listeners already sold on that shelf of romantasy will recognize the shape of what Kate Reading is narrating here: a captivity plot laced with political stakes, a crown prince avenging a murdered grandfather while doubting everything Ardunia taught him about Jinn, and a heroine convinced she is powerless even as everyone around her insists otherwise. At eleven hours and seventeen minutes, this is a shorter listen than most series entries in this genre, which works in the book's favor if, like several of these reviewers, you would rather spend that time on two people circling the same handful of choices than on incident piled on incident.
A Few Reservations
Split narration is the structural choice most likely to divide new listeners the same way it divided these five reviewers. Alizeh and Kamran alternate through the book, and at least one reader found the device weakens Kamran's half specifically, describing him as someone who 'gets in my nerves' more than the story seems to intend. Combine that with a plot that, by more than one account, spans only a day or two of story time despite the eleven-hour runtime, and it becomes clear this is a book built for listeners who want interiority and betrayal politics stretched out slowly rather than events piling up quickly.
The synopsis promises 'explosive magic' and 'heartbreaking betrayal,' language that oversells what the reviews describe as something closer to a chamber piece: two people, and the people plotting around them, working through the same handful of unresolved questions from opposite sides of a war. If wordiness was your complaint about This Woven Kingdom, know going in that at least one reviewer here, coming fresh off the Shatter Me series, found that exact quality intensified rather than trimmed for book two. Storytide released this one in February of 2023, and the runtime, at just over eleven hours, is short enough that the pacing complaints will resolve themselves quickly either way, for better or worse depending on which camp of reviewer you turn out to be.
The Right Listener for These Infinite Threads
Listen if you finished This Woven Kingdom wanting more time with Cyrus and do not mind a sequel that spends its eleven hours on interiority rather than incident. Fans of Mafi's Shatter Me series who came to this world on the author's name alone will likely recognize the same voice at work here, dense and emotionally wound tight by design. Skip it if the wordiness of This Woven Kingdom was already a dealbreaker, since at least one reviewer says that exact quality has only intensified. Listeners hoping for a middle volume that meaningfully advances the plot rather than mostly repositioning its characters may want to sample a preview chapter first, given how directly these five reviews disagree on whether that repositioning actually works. Readers still deciding between this and something faster-moving should weigh how much they enjoyed the enemies-to-lovers tension already established between Kamran and Alizeh, since that dynamic, more than any new plot development, is what carries these eleven hours.
Good to Know
Does the These Infinite Threads audiobook make sense without having read This Woven Kingdom first?
No. All five reviews on this listing assume familiarity with Alizeh and Kamran from This Woven Kingdom, and the story picks up immediately after Kamran's grandfather is killed and Alizeh is taken to Tulan by Cyrus. Skipping book one means missing the entire emotional and political setup for what happens here.
How much ground does the These Infinite Threads audiobook actually cover?
Less than you might expect for an eleven-hour listen. One reviewer counted the story as spanning only a day or two of in-world time, and another calls it a classic book two that repositions characters more than it advances the plot, though several reviewers found that slower pace worked in the story's favor rather than against it.
Is the split narration between Alizeh and Kamran hard to follow?
Not hard to follow so much as uneven. One reviewer found Kamran's chapters harder to connect with than Alizeh's, describing him as grating at points, while others praised the enemies-to-lovers dynamic between the two leads. Kate Reading narrates both perspectives, so the shift in point of view on the page becomes a shift in delivery on audio.
Why do listener ratings for this audiobook range so widely between three and five stars?
The five visible reviews split mainly on wordiness. Readers already devoted to Tahereh Mafi's prose call the writing effortless and immersive, while at least one reviewer coming from Mafi's Shatter Me series found the density that bothered them in This Woven Kingdom even more pronounced here, landing at three stars instead of five.
