Happy Booker

Crewel takes place in a futuristic society where people and events are woven with strands of time by Spinsters. Spinsters are generally girls chosen by their talent at weaving by the Guild in Arras. These girls are taken from their homes and families and then reside within the Guild where they practice weaving time with matter. Everything in Arras is controlled by the Guild through the spinsters such as harvesting food, childbirth, and even when and how someone dies. 

Adelice is unique in Arras society in that she is able to weave the strands of time without a loom. From when, as a child, she first discovers this ability, Adelice’s parents work fervently to teach her how to cover it up so that she is not selected by the Guild who they do not trust. When, at her testing, she is among those chosen to be come a spinster, and is singled out among the others at the Guild, Adelice finds herself not knowing who she can trust. 

The audio was read by Amanda Dolan who does a fairly good job narrating this rather tedious story. At times I thought she may have went a little overboard making some of the characters sound patronizing and condescending, but for the most part I enjoyed her narration. 

While Crewel certainly has an original storyline even for a dystopian, there was far too much of the society that simply pushed the bounds of believability to far for me. For example, if Adelice and the other spinsters were controlled by this sinister Guild, why didn’t they just weave things differently? It was made very clear in the story that the spinsters were the only ones powerful enough to control their reality, I don’t understand the power this Guild had over the spinsters. Also, Adelice experiences some traumatic events very early on in the story, but she seems to just kind of accept them without much emotional impact and goes about her business. She put much more thought and energy into the awkwardly contrived love triangle than she did into events that would have devastated the average teen. But then Adelice is also exceptional in EVERY way, which was yet another issue I had with the book. 

For the most part, I enjoyed the writing style. I didn’t have to struggle through the audio and finished fairly quickly for a 10 hour audio. But for me, the characters were flat and lacked authenticity and the world building was confusing and left more questions than answers. The sudden ending left me feeling a bit perplexed. It just sort of cut off without any resolution at all. It wasn’t so much a cliffhanger as it simply felt unfinished. 

While Crewel just wasn’t for me, there are many people who really enjoyed it. Check out Sam’s review at Realm of Fictionfor another perspective.