The colours are quite bright, which may or may not be your cup of tea. Still, there's quite the payoff at the end, with such a stellar cliffhanger for Book 2 that readers will be dying to dish out the spoilers.Practical items are always welcome and a ceramic travel cup is a great addition to a book box! The artwork is by Jess Taylor and is lovely. It's clear Alizeh is supposed to attend the ball, but it seems more like a vehicle to meeting Kamran again than a real escape plan, and as her plan unravels, it feels far too rushed. Plots weave together, but not cleanly enough to follow the pattern sometimes. This Woven Kingdom is nearly a perfect fantasy tapestry until the climactic action. This conflict drives the pair together in a such a beautifully orchestrated scene that you can imagine romance fans the world over crafting their fan mail before they've even finished the book. When Kamran sees Alizeh, disguised in her usual maid attire, dispatch a threatening street urchin, he's sure both that he's smitten and that she's a spy. She's got super strength, invisibility, and other cool tricks readers learn about as the story goes on - no wonder the nonmagical royals are so jealous they jail anyone for showing off. And then there's the matter of Alizeh's Jinn powers. Second, Prince Kamran is charged with producing an heir and was brought home from the army to marry, stat. First off, Kamran's grandad, King Zaal, has been trying to find and kill Alizeh, the secret Jinn queen, for half of her life - the little matter of a prophesy claiming that she will be the cause of his death. On the scale of just how star-crossed star-crossed lovers can be, the royal pair in this twisty ride of a magical fantasy are a perfectly doomed perfect 10. The main character, Alizeh, while threatened at every turn and always fearful, still makes brave choices and shows resilience. Iranian American author Mafiri adds many touches of her heritage in the naming of the characters, in setting details like the city's public baths, and in the mythology of the Jinn.

Adults drink at a party and in a street gathering where they also smoke shisha (a water pipe). Sexual content is simply a kiss with some light groping and some innuendo. The goriest it gets is talk of kids' brains being eaten, which is a gross revelation but not part of the action of the story. A boy tries to kill himself with a knife rather than go to jail, and there's a story of another boy who finds his father's severed head and tries to kill himself. Characters die in just a few skirmishes with knives and swords and others are found murdered in their sleep with no marks on them. Teen readers need to be more prepared for the higher level of reading required than for a lot of mature content - the character dialogue alone will definitely boost their vocabulary. Parents need to know that Tahereh Mafi's This Woven Kingdom is the start of a fantasy series by the author of the very popular Shatter Me series.

This woven kingdom illumicrate edition