Audiobook Review: Crewel

Crewel (Crewel World, 1) by Gennifer Albin, read by Amanda Dolan, October 16, 2012. 10 Hours. Published by AudioGo. Source: Audiobook Jukebox.

For generations, girls known as Spinsters have been called by Arras' Manipulation Services to work the looms and control what people eat, where they live, how many children they have, and even when they die. Gifted with the unusual ability to weave time with matter, sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys is exactly what the Guild is looking for, and in the world of Arras, being chosen as a Spinster is everything a girl could want. It means privilege, eternal beauty, and being something other than a secretary. It also means the power to embroider the very fabric of life. But Adelice isn't interested. Because once you become a Spinster, there's no turning back.

First Sentence:

They came in the night.

Story
In all the craziness that is life, I completely forgot to listen to/review Crewel in a timely fashion.

Crewel was one of those books were I loved the world and world building more than MC. The reason for this is that Gennifer Albin created such a fascinating world filled with intrigue, deception, and power struggles that pulled me in more then the characters motives. One of the things that makes the world so interesting is that it is unique in the fact that it was created and maintained by the Spinsters and their ability to weave changes and other things into it. It was just so well written that I could pretty much see in my mind the layout of the world and how things worked.

While I may not have loved Adelice as a character, I found her character to be well written. The one thing that kept me fulling connecting to Adelice and her story was that she seemed a little cold, almost like she was beyond feeling what had happened to her when she was picked as a Spinster. Even though I found her a little cold, what I did enjoy about her was that she refused to play by the rules of the Guild and that of the Coventry. It definitely made her more likable in my eyes because

What I liked most about Gennifer Albin's debut, Crewel, would have to be the world and the job of spinsters because it was fascinating to read about, especially since they ahve all this power and yet are so powerless because of the Guild. One of the things that really struck me about the world of Crewel would have to be that underneath the glittery facade that the Guild put forth to the populace was a dark, oppressive regime determining every aspect of the lives of the populace.

Even though I enjoyed Crewel quite a bit, I was a little disappointed over two aspects of this book. The love triangle and Adelice.
   As a reader, I am highly against love triangles because to me they do nothing for the story and they tend to keep the main character from evolving. What turned me off from the triangle on this one was that it was not really needed, it just seemed to be used as a means to introduce both boys into the life of the main character and thus the story.

Narration

There are very few audio books where I love the narration right off the bat, which was the case with Crewel.

So, while I may have been a little iffy on some of the narration of Crewel, I highly enjoyed all the variations between the the female characters. All tell y'all this, this is the first time where I've been  able to easily distinguish all the female characters without hearing their name. It was nice because there are some audio book where all the female or male characters sound exactly alike, but luckily that was not the case here.

It was not that Amanda Dolan was unsuited for the job, the problem was that it took me some time to get into her narration of Crewel and the way she read the characters especially the male ones. While I may have started out not too sold on the narration, I ended up being pulled so far into the world that the author had created that my skepticism left leaving me able to enjoy the rest of the book.

Final Verdict: A unique, well built world.

Crewel earns 4 out of 5 pineapples.