Crewel
Record details
- ISBN: 0374316414 (hardcover)
- ISBN: 9780374316419 (hardcover)
- ISBN: 0374316414 : HRD
-
Physical Description:
p. cm.
print - Edition: 1st ed.
- Publisher: New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2012.
Content descriptions
Summary, etc.: | Gifted with the unusual ability to embroider the very fabric of life, sixteen-year-old Adelice is summoned by Manipulation Services to become a Spinster, a move that will separate her from her beloved family and home forever. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Science fiction |
Available copies
- 8 of 8 copies available at Bibliomation. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Southbury Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 8 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Southbury Public Library | TEEN 2. ALBIN (Text) | 34019126796382 | Teen Fiction | Available | - |
Electronic resources
BookList Review
Crewel - Chapters 1-5
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Debut author Albin spins an intriguing dystopian world that mirrors ours: resources are limited, men have most of the power, and women do the work that holds the world together. Arras is a fragile planet created after Earth failed, woven from threads of time and matter and run by an oligarchy called the Guild. Lucky women work as Spinsters, repairing fragile threads, cleaning threads damaged by aberrant behavior and thought, and monitoring the weave for trouble or revolution. Sixteen-year-old Adelice's skill surpasses that of Spinster, and she is singled out to become the powerful new Creweler. The story opens with a dramatic scene of Adelice's failed escape from service, but uneven pacing follows. She is sometimes puzzlingly passive about the events unfolding around her: death, punishment, a loyal friend's suicide, budding romance, and threats from Cormac, a Guild leader. Still, Adelice has a delightfully snarky mouth, and she takes a leap at the end of the book that will inspire readers to follow her into the next installment. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A full-force multimedia marketing campaign could help this title become the next big dystopian blockbuster.--Dobrez, Cindy Copyright 2010 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Crewel - Chapters 1-5
School Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Gr 7-9-Adelice has the gift: a tremendous talent to see and weave the threads that hold the world of Arras together. And so her parents train her.to be clumsy and awkward, hiding her talent, so she will not be among the chosen, taken away to live forever unmarried, a Spinster. Adelice quickly experiences the title's play on words, for the Guild oversees an often cruel world, where men rule, girls are expected to honor purity standards, and Manipulation Services snips out and reweaves deviant "threads" to maintain order. Renewal patches maintain youth for the rich, and weather, farm crops, and population are all controlled by the Spinsters, who weave and tear out as assigned. Arras is an interesting world, where every part of life can be manipulated upon a loom. Those with the gift to see the threads are required to clean, strengthen, patch, or rip out, directly affecting human life. The book sometimes reads like a Hunger Games wanna-be, with food rationing, a sweet younger sister, transport to a special enclave surrounded by eccentric, hypercontrolling adults, and aestheticians who groom an average girl into a beauty. Spinsters are served by male valets, and Adelice finds herself in a romantic triangle. When she realizes the enormity of her talent, as well as the limits to her life if she remains a Spinster in Arras, she weaves her own creation into the tapestry. Readers will have to wait for the next installment to see how that works out. Consider for purchase in libraries where dystopian romance is popular.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Crewel - Chapters 1-5
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Too many slubs in the fabric of this dystopian romance land it in the "irregular" bin. In Arras, men control everything except reality, which is continually woven and re-woven by Spinsters, all women. They labor at the behest of the patriarchal Guild to maintain a post-apocalyptic utopia. Despite being rigorously coached by her parents to fail her aptitude test, 16-year-old Adelice shows her incredible talent at weaving and is wrested violently from her home to labor in the Coventry for the rest of her life. There, she draws the attention of two handsome young men with electric-blue (or cobalt blue, or sometimes just bright blue) eyes, the oily and evil power-hungry ambassador of the Guild, various catty Spinsters and the Creweler, the most powerful Spinster of them all, who extracts the material that forms the reality of Arras from the ruined Earth. Adelice narrates in the genre's nowde rigueur present tense, whipsawing readers through her guilt, grief, fear, revulsion and lust as she learns the power structures of the Coventry and plots to escape. A genuinely cool premise is undermined by inconsistent worldbuilding, fuzzy physics, pedestrian language, characters who never move beyond stereotype and subplots that go nowhere (including a well-meaning but awkwardly grafted-in gay rights thread). These last may reemerge in the sequel that will follow one of the slowest cliffhangers in recent memory. It's clear that Adelice cares deeply about her fate; it's debatable whether readers will. (Dystopian romance. 12-16)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly Review
Crewel - Chapters 1-5
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewis can ?manipulate reality-weaving it like threads in a tapestry-a remarkable gift that only Spinsters possess. When Adelice's ability is discovered by the all-powerful Guild, she is torn from her family and thrust into a pampered but tightly controlled new life. Adelice and her fellow entry-level Spinsters learn how to keep the land of Arras running smoothly by regulating things like weather and births and also by "ripping" threads: instantly removing those who might pose a threat. As Adelice learns more about the questionable intentions of the Guild's leaders, she relies on two attractive, attentive guards to help decide both her fate and that of her world. Captivating and intense, Albin's intricate debut has the right balance of mystery, romance, and drama to keep readers' attention; Adelice's media- and appearance-focused society is reminiscent of the Capital in The Hunger Games, though this story's violence is more cerebral and remote. The reality-weaving can get murky, but it's easily forgiven as the plot races along to an unexpected conclusion, setting up the next book in this planned series. Ages 12-up. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Times Review
Crewel - Chapters 1-5
New York Times
November 11, 2012
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company
BOOKS with plots that center on technology are rarely about that technology; rather, they are about the impact of that technology. In two new young adult novels, "Crewel" and "Eve & Adam," we face two potentially alarming worlds: one in which technology has fundamentally altered the human body, and in the other, where it's changed the very fabric of reality. And it's up to a couple of teenage heroines to deal with it. In "Crewel," a first novel by Gennifer Albin, 16-year-old Adelice lives in Arras, a dystopic world in which everything is strictly controlled by the Guild. Here, young girls are tested to determine if they have the skill to become Spinsters, women who work on the looms that control all things. Adelice has the skill, but her parents want her to deliberately fail the test. The ruse doesn't work, and Adelice is whisked away to the Western Compound, a coventry of Spinsters. The opening section of "Crewel" leans a bit heavily on newly established mechanics of post"Hunger Games" novels: the hungry family, the journey to the center of power, the conspicuous feasting, the assigning of trainers and cosmetologists, the makeover. Get past this, though, and the story takes a definite turn. It begins to echo, much more faintly, another book - "The Handmaid's Tale." Women hold the key to running Arras and therefore must be controlled in every way. The highest position for a woman is as a (supposedly virginal) Spinster. But Coventry is full of posturing, dangerous gossip and sex. While two teenage boys are put forward as possible romantic interests for Adelice, she also has to contend with the advances of the middle-aged commander, Cormac. We get the full spectrum of desire and a taste of its outcomes, both sweet and sour. There are points where the logic of the worldbuilding in "Crewel" doesn't quite hold together. That only women can weave is a bit baffling and forced. But while the reader can pick apart the threads that aren't quite as well woven into the pattern, it's also easy to step back and enjoy the picture. The halls of Coventry are dark and twisted places readers will want to visit. In "Eve & Adam," written by the husband-and-wife team of Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate, the heroine starts off with a bit more power, and the story takes place in a world that bears many similarities to our own. Evening (Eve) Spiker is the daughter of the billionaire businesswoman Terra Spiker, of Spiker Biopharmaceuticals. When Eve's leg is crushed in an accident, her mother has Eve experiment with the company's top-secret Project 88715, a machine that can create actual human beings. (And that, at least for now, is where the similarities end.) Over the course of the story Eve presses buttons, and Adam, - her ideal boy - grows at her command. Eve is at first unaware that Adam is real, possibly because she has other things to think about There are multiple revelations about the role the Spiker technology has played in her own life. Then too, there's Solo, the handsome boy who serves as dogsbody to the project's scientists. Why, you may wonder, is a teenage boy living inside a biopharmaceutical company? An answer is given to this question (he's an orphan, and his parents helped found the company), but it's not an answer that really satisfies. He's there because the story needs him to be there. The names Eve and Adam, the spikes of Spiker, the fact that Eve is thinking of an apple in the first sentence when she is struck by the car - it's all just a wee bit pat, a bit too on the nose. This is a world in which computer systems are breezily hacked. Eve presses buttons; Adam grows in a tank. Eve's bad-girl best friend may carry a strip of condoms and two flasks, but she has a heart of gold. Even the furniture ends up playing the role for which it seems destined. I HAVE no blanket objection to the brisk, broad strokes of "Eve & Adam." I'm an unapologetic lover of summer blockbusters and well-paced thrillers, especially ones that have more Science! than science. But a thriller needs to surprise, to pop out of unexpected corners. "Eve & Adam" is like the whodunit in which we know the mysterious lump behind the curtain is the murderer waiting to strike and the gun planted in the first act will go off in the third. It lacks the mystery of Grant's "Gone" series, and arguably more interesting questions are posed by Applegate's wildly successful Animorphs. However, Grant and Applegate are beloved for a reason: They put strong stories at the heart of what they do. "Eve & Adam" might not be their best work - it's often silly where it should be suspenseful - but it is delivered with absolute confidence and a style that sweeps you along. Both stories epitomize Arthur C. Clarke's adage that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Lovers of science fiction might not get their hard science quotient from either of these books, but there are joys to be had in both, as long as you don't ask too many questions about the man behind the curtain. Maureen Johnson is the author of the Suite Scarlett series and, most recently, of "The Name of the Star."