From the Bookshelf of What's the Name of That Book???…

Crewel (Crewel World, #1)

Gennifer Albin

Why we're reading this: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com …more
[close] https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

May 06, 2012 Hannah added it

Shelves: ya, fantasy, dystopia-post-apocalyptic

Yeah, so I was assigned this review for TeenReads but they don't like it when you're honest if it means you tell people that books aren't always good, so they didn't post it. Here's my review:

Arras is a delicate place, and it needs its Spinsters to keep it woven tightly together. A nation that is literally made up of the threads of its universe, Arras, the place Adelice Lewys calls home, is manipulated on looms run by young women gifted with the ability to see the threads. For most young women Yeah, so I was assigned this review for TeenReads but they don't like it when you're honest if it means you tell people that books aren't always good, so they didn't post it. Here's my review:

Arras is a delicate place, and it needs its Spinsters to keep it woven tightly together. A nation that is literally made up of the threads of its universe, Arras, the place Adelice Lewys calls home, is manipulated on looms run by young women gifted with the ability to see the threads. For most young women who pass testing, becoming a Spinster is an honor—it means beautiful dresses, the privilege of cosmetics, and a lavish lifestyle. But Adelice knows better, even if she doesn’t know exactly why, and her parents warned her to try to fail testing on purpose, even though she has always been able to see the threads. For if you’re chosen as a Spinster, you never see your family again, and your life changes forever.

Unfortunately, during testing, Adelice weaves a moment, which is more than any potential Spinster is usually able to do during her first test. She hopes against hope that no one has seen. That evening, she is forcibly taken from her home, and she’s not sure if her parents and sister are able to escape. Trying to hide from the Guild is a highly punishable offense.

When she is taken to the Guild, Adelice must learn the rules and etiquette required of Spinsters, and they don’t come easily. She becomes the scapegoat of one of the senior Spinsters who is charged with teaching the new girls, and were it not for the help of two valets, Erik and Josten, who both vie for Adelice’s attention, Adelice would probably not be safe.

But she’s too talented to be done away with, even though the Guild and the Spinsters could easily cut Adelice’s thread altogether or re-weave it so that her life took an entirely different route. They hold power over the entire nation and its citizens, after all. Soon Adelice realizes what a cruel practice this cutting and re-weaving is, and she has to sneak around to learn more about just what type of a place Arras is and where she and the Creweler, Loricel, fit in to it all.

Arras is a place delicately woven and tightly managed, but unfortunately Albin’s writing is not. She sets up the world of the story with carriages and that vaguely British-sounding language pattern we love in our fantasy stories, but that voice becomes inconsistent and is interspersed with the speech of today. The love triangle is tired, and Erik and Josten are so indistinguishable as characters it feels more like a line. Albin seems to take the fact that CREWEL is a planned trilogy a little too liberally, and the book has no semblance of a satisfying end to a part of a story. Instead, the final pages leave you suspended but not in delicious suspense.

The world proposed in CREWEL is lovely and intriguing. Clearly based in the Greek and Roman mythology of the Fates, who could spin, weave, and cut each human’s thread of life, the novel could be compelling, but it falls short because the only thing new to it is the world. The plot, though, you’ve seen before. Many, many times.
...more

Like · see review

Jun 08, 2012 Emma rated it it was ok

Shelves: bea

Arras is rigidly monitored by the Guild to ensure prosperity and peace. The weave of the world is carefully manipulated by Spinsters working for the Guild to control everything from rations to the weather itself. Life as a Spinster holds untold promise with wealth, beauty, celebrity, and rarest of all power.

Adelice Lewys wants none of it.

Adelice knows the moment her hands slip on the testing loom is one she can never take back. Her years of training to be clumsy and artless, to fail when the tim ...more

Like · see review

Jan 04, 2014 Marianne rated it really liked it

I'm not a fantasy lover, but I really like the world created by Albion in this novel. The premise that the Creweler and Spinsters can create and change parts of the world and manipulate time through their looms and weaving was original, and I'm looking forward to #2! ...more

Like · see review

Oct 15, 2012 Amanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: dystopia, arcs, science-fiction, gender-wars

Definitely an interesting start to a series with a unique premise/world with thought-out politics. I look forward to the next book.

Like · see review

Oct 02, 2012 Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides marked it as decided-not-to-read

Shelves: children-ya, fantasy-fiction

Pretty cover. I couldn't quite engage with this one. I think it helped me put my finger on what bugs me about most modern implementations of the dystopia. That the society has gone wrong is almost always in your face. In classic dystopias, the society is clearly different but the wrongness sneaks up on you. There's some subtlety. ...more

Like · see review