All This Twisted Glory

“Her thoughts churned as she gazed up into the pitch, where the thick of night was freckled all over by stars. Alizeh knew that fireflies, too, lived in Tulan’s atmosphere, and the shimmer was so dense this evening it blurred in places. It was as if a child had pressed a hand to the heavens and smeared its glitter across the sky.”

This passage is an example of Mafi’s lyrical writing, rich with literary devices. An example of a figure of speech is the metaphor comparing stars to freckles on the skin of the night sky; while the simile of smeared glitter also describes the firmament. The evocative writing adds to the world-building, making the novel’s landscapes come alive for the reader.

“Inch by harrowing inch Cyrus was made to ascend the stairs by way of dark magic, his own blood choking in his throat. He was half-blind as his severed bones scraped together, piercing organs and tearing flesh. It was a state of suffering so excruciating he’d lost consciousness over and over, only to wake up each time on the slick ground in a shallow pool of his own gore, and made to climb the stairs again.”

As this passage shows, if the text contains vivid descriptions of beauty, it also well illustrates horrifying scenarios. Iblees’s torment of Cyrus is often detailed in graphic terms to convey its intensity. Here, Cyrus is forced to ascend the stairs again and again in a broken state until his body heals. Visual images such as his lying in “a shallow pool of his own gore” and aural descriptions of his bones scraping together convey the degree of his suffering.

“That day, Cyrus had learned cowardice was a luxury.

Only the privileged few could afford to run away, to lock their doors and close their eyes to ugliness. The rest lived in homes without doors to lock, looked through eyes without lids to shut. They confronted the dark even as their hearts trembled, as their souls shook—for even strangled by fear, there was no choice but to endure.”

Cyrus’s torment is a metaphor for human existence, with humans always beleaguered by suffering and fate. The only heroic way to survive such an existence is to live with the pain. The people who don’t have the luxury to lock their homes reflect real-world communities dealing with war, violence, and displacement. No hero is coming along to slay their demons, so the communities must be brave and fight their own battles.

“Fate, he thought bitterly, was only romantic when one was destined to be the hero.”

Mafi intersperses dialogue and description with pithy bits of hard-won wisdom from characters, lending depth to their portrayal. Cyrus, a prince, may have grown up on romantic ideas of fate and destiny, but the reality is that fate is attractive only in stories and for history’s victors. For others, fate means a loss of free will and hardship. Again, Cyrus’s observation is an allusion to real-world suffering.

“Clay King was once a little boy,

and he would often cry

for milk and sleep and wooden rattles

and a soothing lullaby

Now he is a strong young man

and still, we see him cry!

Poor heart is broken

Weak mind is weary

He simply wants to DIE!”

An example of Iblees’s communication to Cyrus, this cruel poem shows how the devil uses his knowledge of Cyrus’s past and present to cause him mental anguish. Cyrus’s crying out for a lullaby as a baby cruelly alludes to his parents’ neglect. Iblees points out that Cyrus still weeps to infantilize him and show him that he counts for nothing. Thus, Iblees proves himself an expert in psychological manipulation and torment.

“Delivering him not merely the vision of an angel but the temptation of the real thing? He, who’d been discarded by all—shunned by the Diviners, hunted by his mother, betrayed by his father, abandoned by his brother, plunged into isolation and hated throughout the world? He, whose desiccated heart turned to dust before her tenderness?

Alizeh was the fulfillment of his most desperate, undisclosed desire.”

For Cyrus, the cruelest bit of Iblees’s torture is making him think Alizeh loves him unconditionally. Cyrus is ripe for such a suggestion because he has always felt shunned and discarded; that a superlatively beautiful and kind queen like Alizeh can love him is beyond his wildest dreams. Cyrus’s reflection also shows why he simultaneously loves and fears Alizeh: He is terrified Alizeh will leave him or is in cahoots with the devil.

“He was terrified she’d go and do something brutal, like smile at him.”

One of the singular features of the descriptions of romantic love in the text is the juxtaposition of love with terror and annihilation. For Cyrus, Alizeh’s smile is “brutal,” and his anticipation of her is terrifying. His peculiar experience of love informs his fear that Alizeh will leave him or consider him unworthy of her, as well as the intensity and purity of the love. His love for Alizeh is so deep it borders on self-sacrifice. Thus, Cyrus experiences it as rapture and terror.

“He didn’t need to turn to see her, for Alizeh lived always in luxury behind his eyes; he turned because the act of aligning his body towards hers was chased every time by a strange relief.”

Mafi uses lush, poetic language to capture the intensity of emotions between Cyrus and Alizeh. The expression “lived always in luxury behind his eyes” is a metaphor which implicitly compares Cyrus’s eyes to windows, curtains, or rooms. Alizeh is always present behind these curtains, showing that she occupies the room of Cyrus’s eyes, mind, and heart.

“‘Do I get one, too?’

Cyrus frowned. ‘Would that…please you?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘All right.’ He blinked slowly. ‘You can have a dragon.’”

As Cyrus has Kaveh rescue him and Alizeh from their fall, a fainting Alizeh asks him if she too can have a dragon. The request is an allusion to the earlier books of the series, where Cyrus had asserted that the dragon on which he was taking Alizeh to Tulan was his alone. Cyrus’s ready offer of a dragon to Alizeh shows how far he has come from the first book.

“‘NO,’ he cried, jolting away from her. ‘No—no—’

‘Cyrus—’ She reached for him, alarmed, but he tore away, his limbs tangling in the bedclothes.

‘Don’t—Please—’ He dropped his head in his hands. ‘Oh God—not again—I can’t—I won’t survive it—’

‘What’s happening?’ she said, panicking. ‘What’s wrong—?’

‘No—no—NO,’ he shouted, falling off the bed. ‘This isn’t real, this isn’t real—wake up, you fucking idiot—wake up, wake up, WAKE UP—’”

The text uses the universal experience of trying to wake up from a nightmare to convey Cyrus’s horror at grappling with Iblees’s visions. Once again, Cyrus dreams of Alizeh, the two making love. However, he knows the realistic vision is a dream, and struggles to dispel it. The intensity with which he berates himself for dreaming indicates his terror: Cyrus genuinely feels he will lose himself in the dream or will shatter when he realizes the dream is untrue.

“‘We are a people with no nation, expelled from our own land, the earth under our feet stolen by Clay kings. For so long we’ve been waiting for the heir to our empire, the one who will protect and unify our people. I have no way of knowing for certain how many will come’—he shook his head—‘but you may trust that those who can, will. By foot, by caravan, by ship or dragon. If they have to drag themselves, inch by inch across the earth to get to her, they will.’”

The text uses the theme of oppression to highlight the current state of world affairs. The Jinn, expelled from their land, may be a reference to populations in conflict zones from Ukraine to Afghanistan to Palestine. The Jinn have become foreigners in their homeland, and their rights have been curtailed. The Jinn organizing under Alizeh is a metaphor for disenfranchised communities fighting for themselves, rather than waiting for a savior from outside the community. It also demonstrates the theme of Cultural Heritage as a Source of Power and Conflict, indicating both why the Jinn support Alizeh so strongly as well as why those who oppose her do so.

“‘But 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’—he shook his head—‘you will die an impatient man.’”

The wise teacher Rostam uses the series-wide metaphor of a woven rug or tapestry to explain the nature of existence to a young Cyrus. Suffering is one of the strands of life and must be accepted. Moreover, life has to be lived in the presence—rather than the absence—of difficulties.

“The mastery of self means never fearing the consequences of doing what is right.”

Rostam’s advice to Cyrus is an important clue to Cyrus’s mysterious actions in the present. Though the reasons for Cyrus’s decisions are ambiguous, they could be simply Cyrus doing the best he can given his constrained circumstances, though the consequences are terrifying. This may be why Cyrus faces Iblees in the cave, performs the blood oath, and vows his kingdom to Alizeh.

“In another life he would’ve been one of them, would’ve forsaken rank and prestige to occupy instead the liminal spaces of existence, where ego was eclipsed by the spheres of alchemy and prophecy. It was what he’d always wanted: to devote his life to the distillation of being.”

Cyrus still longs for the Diviner’s life, dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and magic. In this rarefied pursuit, power, rank, and ego appear meaningless. Ironically, despite his innermost desires, Cyrus lives a life of political intrigue and hierarchy. This irony suggests that those who do not seek power for the sake of power may be best-placed to rule.

“Alizeh looked at her friends, a tight joy unfurling inside her. She was reminded then of something her parents used to say to each other—when they dropped things; when they lost an argument; when they bumped into each other in the kitchen; when they made silly mistakes. They’d laugh, lock eyes—

‘Shuk pazir ke manam, manam,’ said Alizeh.

Thank you for receiving me as I am.

Omid’s eyes widened, then he laughed out loud. ‘I haven’t heard that since before my parents died.’

‘Ooh, I know this one!’ said Huda. ‘Shuk nosti ke tanam, tanam.’

Thank you for trusting me with who you are.”

Alizeh’s reunion with Huda, Omid, and the others emphasizes the theme of found families: she feels a sense of kinship with her friends who, like her, are isolated in their own ways. They find comfort in each other despite their lack of blood ties. The fact that Alizeh uses the call-and-response familiar to her parents with her friends shows her friends’ importance in her life.

“Justice!

Justice!

For the land that once was ours

For the millions that were slain

For the rivers red with blood

For the centuries of pain […]

For our parents in the ground

For the coffins that we built

For the tiny hands and quiet hearts

of the children who were killed […]

Justice!

Justice!”

Inspired by Alizeh’s presence, the Jinn crowd gathered in Mesti often sing songs of revolution. Songs, slogans, and cries are particularly important in revolution since the medium of word and voice breaks the silence imposed by dominant discourses. Representing conflict-battled communities in the real world, the Jinn sing because their stories have been muffled for too long.

“[Kamran] strode in Huda’s direction with lightning speed, looking as if he might tie her to a tree and leave her there. ‘You brazen, unmanageable delinquent—’

‘Delinquent?’ she cried. She quickly backed away from him, her face bright with color. ‘What crimes have I committed? None! You, on the other hand, nearly killed the prophesied Jinn queen of the entire world and then expect her to go on a carriage ride with you—’

He stopped in place. ‘I apologized!’

‘My condolences!’ she shot back. ‘That must’ve been hard for you!’

‘Heavens,’ said Alizeh, who could no longer contain her laughter. ‘When did this tender relationship begin?’”

The back-and-forth between Kamran and Huda provides moments of levity in the tense proceedings of the novel. Using the romance trope of enemies-turned-friends, these exchanges foreshadow a romantic storyline between Kamran and Huda. Alizeh’s sly observation about their “tender” relationship foreshadows a relationship between the two in the following novels, as her own attraction to Kamran fades away.

“All she had to do was imagine him touching her to stir up a tempest in her heart. When she recalled the sight of him—his powerful, gleaming body, the ferocious need in his eyes—not only did she struggle for breath, but she was possessed by a mortifying impulse to make an indelicate sound, and had to bite her lip to keep the tortured whimper trapped in her throat.”

Alizeh’s perspective shows that she, too, is deeply affected by Cyrus. This description of her attraction to Cyrus acknowledges female desire and the female gaze. Alizeh is not just the passive object of Cyrus’s affection; she also wishes to touch him and often dreams of his “powerful, gleaming body.”

“‘What are you doing?’ asked Hazan, who’d risen to his feet. ‘Will you not be performing the ceremony here?’

‘No,’ Cyrus said, his voice low and dark. ‘I don’t want any blood near my books.’”

There is bleak humor in Cyrus’s straight-faced pronouncement about not wanting blood on his books: Cyrus knows he will soon be covered in his own blood, but fastidiously wants to protect his library. His preoccupation with his books also suggests that he is still hurt after catching Alizeh and Kamran’s embrace and does not trust that they are not conspiring against him.

“He could hardly look at Alizeh without losing his mind; nearly four weeks he’d seen her only in his dreams, and he’d all but forgotten how finely wrought she was in real life, how delicate her features, how soft the curves of her cheeks. He came to life when she smiled, drew breath when her eyes brightened, died when she left a room.”

Cyrus’s love for Alizeh is described in terms often used for divine rapture and spiritual ecstasy. The particular vocabulary—“coming to life,” dying—indicates a state of dependence. Cyrus loves Alizeh so much he wants to lose his ego to her, and thus, his simultaneous fear of annihilation. He already dies every time she leaves the room.

“The imposing, soaring shelves towered over them as they went, the smell of old books and aged leather filling her nose. It was a well-loved room, clearly a place meant for more than display, dotted throughout with worn chairs and rugs. As she pushed on, Alizeh discovered the heart of it: at the end was a discrete space anchored by a mammoth, unlit fireplace, around which were a collection of plush sofas and low tables lit by golden light from nearby lamps. The back wall, however, was a masterwork of glass: massive windows and doors looked out upon a heath crowned by a brilliant moon, the glow of which cast an ethereal spotlight upon a single figure.”

The description of Cyrus’s beloved library is an example of Mafi’s use of sensorial imagery to make a space come alive for the reader. The writing evokes the smell of old books, as well as the sight of large windows overlooking a moonlit grassland.

“Alizeh had made a decision, and she would not diverge from the path before her. She’d been born to lead her people to freedom, to protect them from the cruelty of a world that sought to misunderstand and destroy them. Nothing else could matter. She had to accept as fact that sometimes revolution demanded darkness in exchange for light.”

Alizeh’s resolve to participate in the gruesome blood oath mirrors Cyrus’s decision to withstand Iblees’s torture. She knows she must follow the dark path and face fear if she wants to liberate her people. The resolve establishes her as a parallel to Cyrus, as well as the archetype of a revolutionary.

“He closed his eyes and held out his hands, palms up, and soon there came a spine-chilling sound, like a skitter of insects, as a skin of darkness formed slowly along the ceiling.”

Cyrus’s summoning of the dark magic required for the blood oath has a Gothic, horror-movie quality. The eerie scene involves the vivid sounds of swarming insects, building tension and situating the reader firmly in the world of the narrative.