Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Weaver: A Novel
    The Weaver: A Novel
    The Weaver: A Novel
    Ebook336 pages4 hours

    The Weaver: A Novel

    By Emmi Itäranta

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The author of the critically acclaimed Memory of Water returns with this literary ecological tale in the vein of Ursula K. Le Guin and Sheri S. Tepper, in which an innocent young woman becomes entangled in a web of ancient secrets and deadly lies that lie at the dark center of her prosperous island world.

    Eliana is a model citizen of the island, a weaver in the prestigious House of Webs. She also harbors a dangerous secret—she can dream, an ability forbidden by the island’s elusive council of elders. No one talks about the dreamers, the undesirables ostracized from society.

    But the web of protection Eliana has woven around herself begins to unravel when a young girl is found lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the stones outside the house. Robbed of speech by her attackers, the only clue to her identity is one word tattooed in invisible ink across her palm: Eliana. Why does this mysterious girl bear her name? What links her to the weaver—and could she hold Eliana’s fate in her hand?

    As Eliana finds herself growing closer to this injured girl she is bound to in ways she doesn’t understand, the enchanting lies of the island begin to crumble, revealing a deep and ancient corruption. Joining a band of brave rebels determined to expose the island’s dark secrets, Eliana becomes a target of ruthless forces determined to destroy her. To save herself and those she loves, she must call on the power within her she thought was her greatest weakness: her dreams.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 1, 2016
    ISBN9780062326195
    Author

    Emmi Itäranta

    Emmi Itäranta (b. 1976) was born in Tampere, Finland, where she also grew up. She holds an MA in Drama from the University of Tampere and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Kent, UK, where she began writing her debut novel Memory of Water. Itäranta’s professional background is an eclectic blend of writing-related activities, including stints as a columnist, theatre critic, dramaturge, scriptwriter and press officer. She lives in Canterbury, UK.

    Related to The Weaver

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Same River Twice

      Feb 3, 2022

      Same River Twice
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Time Machine

      Aug 4, 2021

      There’s a pattern built into this story – can you work it out from the numbers in bold at the start of each section? I’m sitting on the beach by Rhodes port, watching sailors load our luggage onto a ship bound for Rome. I don’t want to go, but my f

      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2020

      Yes, let the body swell and contract with the waves, which I tryto remember when I follow herinto the sea, not heeding the ambulances in me as we skim aboveurchins, their million arms. At dinner later, over spaghetti carbonara,and tiny silver sardine

      3 min read

    • Article

      New Nature Writer Of The Year 2021 Runner-up

      Sep 23, 2021

      Former local government worker Mike is a keen walker and wildlife enthusiast, based in North Yorkshire. Prize judge Stephen Moss praised his entry as: “A delightful recollection of a long-ago boyhood, written with imagination and a real sense of the

      3 min read

    • Article

      Into The Wild

      Jul 22, 2019

      Into The Wild
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Storytellers

      Apr 28, 2023

      The Storytellers
      3 min read

    • Article

      Selkie

      Feb 3, 2022

      Selkie
      10 min read

    • Article

      Thin Ice

      Oct 27, 2022

      Thin Ice
      6 min read

    • Article

      Song Of The Woods

      May 23, 2022

      Song Of The Woods
      7 min read

    • Article

      Swimming Between Continents

      Jun 4, 2021

      Today is the day that I swim between two continents. I’m ridiculously excited. A feeling that is mixed with nerves of anticipation and worry. Nothing new there then. The continents are actually only two kilometres apart but with the currents and the

      8 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      May 1, 2020

      Your body becomes dangerousin water, after you watch Memoirs of a Geisha & learn aboutthe eel & the cave, knowing it’s a metaphor for sex but alsotaking it literally, imagining what animal mightswim up into you as you wade, nakedin the lake under a c

      1 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      Bait Fishing

      Feb 2, 2024

      Bait Fishing
      2 min read

    • Article

      Queen Of Salt

      Feb 6, 2020

      Queen Of Salt
      10 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Sometimes The Gods Can Be Cruel

      Oct 27, 2023

      Sometimes The Gods Can Be Cruel
      7 min read

    • Article

      Eyes To The Skies

      Sep 22, 2022

      Eyes To The Skies
      2 min read

    • Article

      Mountain Time

      Jan 1, 2021

      In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

      10 min read

    • Article

      Not Another scary Sea Story

      Jun 20, 2019

      Not Another scary Sea Story
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Boatman And The Bear

      May 27, 2022

      The Boatman And The Bear
      9 min read

    • Article

      Turbulent Waters

      Mar 1, 2024

      Turbulent Waters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      You have to go back to being immature,a timed regression essentialto running up a further lifetime of debt. I owe you, the polar bear says,an icy French OUI. A kiss on both cheeks,plus a wish to sit on a bench at the center of a green-painted park,yo

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Weaver

    3.5/5

    59 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      While almost any book will suffer to some extent in translation, there are problems with this book that are not translation-related. The first being the doltishness of the protagonist. To wit:

      Scene: you live in a semi-authoritarian state and the police have just shown up to take some of your coworker-roommates away, including at least one child of 10 or 12. You could of course attempt to stop the police from doing this, but any idiot could see that that's going to accomplish nothing beyond getting you carted off as well. It's also not unlikely it would earn both you and the people or person you were trying to rescue worse treatment.

      Later on you are hauled off by the police and encounter the child who was taken earlier. The child upbraids you for not saving her, and you, in defiance of all sense, accept full responsibility for the child's situation. Apparently you have such an overdeveloped sense of guilt and have bought so fully into the aphorism that misery loves company that you feel guilty when you can't provide said company. You shouldn't be in prison, but you should seek psychological help (and you should have explain what an asinine attitude the kid was copping, if you ask me).

      There are other instances of mental thickness that seem mainly to exist to eliminate any possibility that you, the reader, might in any way be confused. This consists of the main character being lead by the nose (sometimes by herself, other times by others) in steps so minuscule, you find it difficult to imagine that the author isn't deliberately trying to insult your intelligence--memory too, as on at least one occasions the super-obvious event which the main character has to have dissected in front of her happened only a few pages ago and was in no way minor, rather it was quite pivotal.

      So, while I liked the setting and the plot, the being led around by the nose and the main character's tedious, overdeveloped senses of guilt and responsibility grated on my nerves.
    • 3/5
      In a society where dreams are forbidden Eliana experiences night-maeres, which she must keep hidden or suffer banishment. She lives in an island city, in the House of Webs, whose head is called the Weaver. All born on the island bear tattoos showing their citizenship with a mark added yearly to show age. The city is prone to flooding by the sea and there is an overhead transport system of gondolas travelling on suspended ropes, and rope bridges between buildings. One day a girl whose tongue has been cut out is brought in to the House. In a certain kind of light Eliana’s name can be seen to be tattooed on her hand. The mystery builds from that point as Eliana comes into contact with a resistance movement, is betrayed by the Weaver and banished to a punishment detachment diving for valuable red coral. The normal text is interspersed at long intervals with passages rendered in italics and which, apart from starting and finishing partway on a page, have no punctuation to separate them from the rest. The setting has similarities to Itäranta’s first novel Memory of Water in that there is an oppressive regime from whom secrets must be kept. The City of Woven Streets leans more towards fantasy than, and does not have the clarity nor focus of, that previous book. Eliana’s escape from servitude is fortuitous and the final confrontation seems a bit rushed. This may be due to the pressure of the deadline to which Itäranta refers in her Acknowledgements.
    • 4/5
      Delightfully creative writing by Itäranta, put me in mind of some of China Miéville's works.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely stunning, gorgeously written, with a story that starts out as a familiar dystopia but morphs into something surprising and clever. Highly recommended
    • 2/5
      Reading is such a powerful tool to have. The concept of this story really got me excited. I picked it up ready to settle in for a good read. The beginning did start out good. Yet, it quickly became apparent to me that my joy was disappearing fast. The story moved slowly without a lot of details about the world that Eliana existed in or why her talents were so precious. In fact, after reading about a third of the way I put the book down for good. Yet, despite my lack of joy, I decided to come back to this book and give it a second chance. Only, this time I picked up the book and opened it to a random spot a little past the middle of the story and began to start reading. What I read then had me intrigued. Details about the world were more apparent. However, I still could not capture that emotional connection towards Eliana or anyone else in the story. I can see where the author was going with this book and I applaud the author but I needed that character connection, more details, and intensity earlier on. Sadly, this book was not for me (this time).
    • 3/5
      I feel sorry for this book. It has some interesting ideas, and a lot of the writing is very good. I was frustrated with the author, or maybe her editor, for not paring some of the detail back. It felt at times as though she had left all her back story notes in the book, all the things she needed to write about the society she was creating in order to know how her characters would move around it in relation to each other but that I as a reader didn't need to get bogged down in. It could have been punchier.The story is set on an unnamed island, similar to Venice in a way, but not based on Venice. The island is divided into sectors based on the equivalent of craft guilds. There are weavers in the House of Webs, writers in the House of Words and ink makers in the House of Inks. Then there is the House of the Tainted, where this society's untouchables are sent. Merchants come and go, but the inhabitants of the island rarely leave and new residents rarely arrive from outside. That is until a strange girl is found assaulted in the street. She bears a mysterious tattoo in invisible ink that connects her to one of the weavers.The story reminded me of The Name of the Rose but with an added dose of climate change dystopia. There was a controlling Council who named dreaming as a heresy and sent out City Guards to purge society of Dreamers and there was an underground resistance. In the middle is the protagonist trying to get to the truth. The only draw back was the author forgetting to remove her book plan from the story. Too much detail drowned out the narrative.

    Book preview

    The Weaver - Emmi Itäranta

    }ebook_preview_excerpt.html}˒#r쯔薙<4҆}=|/aXEy<}ڿeo2Qޯ~w>X/;}ߟlmyw/8wKO>qSO>^&-~>/̗~E?4S_oǶk 0cm|c7c7tKU?7?U\7MuchScow6u* ؇å*~kvCh1!3,6_~9_P㳦~UxUzƟ38?ctG#"V,1áoX?oyjbv\ߖ:աMK˄U黳|]h}g c{nÄM}8ĺ19ıG7_8_xsm/XIi3X߅_s4jqVT0}7Uo5eq? `wǾ X0ȴLC!웈T1cM3Pj |0:ݵ…ߓHO1R= נ?{Pw] T%pG o5Cu?L U><Ù^x#vzxef*~r8ު6V]_!X=UZhz$WLq g/0nGQ1{e:~ax4./^ؚoIlg-]]¾߸^&N46a2p0.cڛS O!AMǗ&üx,֍E,(!Ҋ ..\L? ՇYq:09?`"sa.'Zu7aY+8{a; a5wpjO`= g<ހhr Iͽ ]vkE#`N{; rVTBi "I'Đ`0T;@"lȰ̲6? DW} nX}iۓvINS0aXP<i4ǚ k%])i-G(櫋|, uqJޙ޿IڏB.2&.#4lXsoм:51%8 \H`b~qեx/BͪѬkye}es$s%!)ϨOd'|AP# `Y|kӞr B?)bhdLeo828y-?31{; C_k%OAXym9SئO_gw S-b7r#Mc'j/"- ח}b"X|Fe`ʅΟ3sz,EfhbA0\LU&U?0O w>A#dzL-Ύ2 [WP ,2 Hlr1mZ7 e%ez^)PpPi xN1b]H/v !s3!7'!^$c&&$Zå>\1Q:I o>G{@P< )A S Ӵ þ?Af''FQz\s_97BW|)JnMz)36^CFY.0 S]HhHq]|uo>WHi_,qh{NCoNqg+vcp"  ; E" Q;nPZNGdV!z!Gx q^ƜcH':9L)bڙaf - xgӼ xyh!:2$i㱹_\5eSt֔+?;T(` N?R/^૷Lmls\2t&qE5 8/b70y?"sɚ y֓f琑jߵؙX̪N'~;bncTRHvmK+q+&K; ʝh0fnD @-@Aqc+1ct!H{2#ڍ8>,N qwad~ u&>㹖f"\b] PyoڙS>pjsT7:|3ttQD'h^3YX.Zk\̍s/]grB>, :Q @o93(j#11!?0 jZ,ΒV6TVERv6qO'S).m)g5xDXv/V#|P9@&.xXXU%+D2xg#ͮDӿ*DL'ih`FJG ml0*(*d'#"+4s6{8xc70=׋?`U.chNm|^5vuGSlW=#lEo{zpFolT8>Vâ/gCƺi]*լXH9NX J2Q_S󁪶Qe% _ZEz78WܲӴ)0õ ~XMe ku!$F{9V?c"H1t(^LKpTH~h*k(3ӓ3G|ATsJc};SRHNلu/lQTRTEd >ywϦ7;~+dYB8/8 K, ξ-8=ga(}``C8Zp*"?!9ԛ2"cep$O_O1 ;NdD>p8&4䪚Xy4GDx Dvqk#W ]Ie0#yz|o&gg +_҉*U8|po<;qJy FUEew2 ާ0F[&oPg!N8"ë]Wy+YH1ZX%`f(c6)Up`hM.µ˷}̲ހUQIL9í1DmG^ox%& 9sٽ,lP #b=V] E4ʛۇLwxcsj:x@V=sM0D(8) k7+:mb >w9Xn [ +v6J#?'@/~9`f6cVl.k/NR[T&Ohc^=MRv66jjK~ 5]uI)@E5ڲI"᷸ö)֚N '̧Aj$=ߜ`*rUpN=;{OX@W W`#D1)z @MQ=ѭx:O֜"uDiw@0nvؔKĮS:P2Ab$EYi|ժVP6Sʞ8,50][Ӳ4d{CYI { ^x㷹tv8H1_êpX9ʻTG>Bې$]vQJ=drۃgեlH6/W>ެ2-f;r܅ZH k/VlzE8,i3+r&*8HzP )]~݂} ;ѪAOFDnCE餓I~H~5,=ƏXYzm3Xx0PR 49hz:Ah) y'!SV)Q=L vU2BzHj-WX~`"/,B 0䢫a:%YҺߗ%snVB5տuǼ؜ˑs5K[v/IMid˹ FK\-fi5 {exV[hm٬d5F1h Vzt(>-U$uK?g-(Avz,sS N.X;~l}{릝 [Nv%#‘XIÙ?7jњM06yƣr]v(K);LoGIA1.g.n:hVrUَ:2Khyj.X&VDQKpc,Idm&BԿ2ύw0`וB kIǪշ]nv;.$w{x,GJV>]54g7TQu,IVVղigکb}hHŮ:BWGO_7I$ם-0uM,%>9MA3fi<;Z S~cIhA$8U;&h)(zȳ5jO$ ˯(n5}?vȪQwr#1JƁk ǻX-kudaD1~J ¹$h'l󟰝}cݒ"*ߓVϽk"PUt1v"s;+KuqFU3\J>ոo&ј jDiz_UZ=3>M,ϩy)Qǣ׈Nac |zw7̮81 4>Ƴr=% S-x~=A 6m[rYݍTCgkB;Lk9ubI;ɯ4^fpyċ8# JZssC^G:+"$ͬ-7^TT }ӷf3[[LTsmMhv~<σ3/w[s:|>&ɭ(eǤeN8hyKrUbsG]Ք`vm{N~:XBias%6)cb>zc&>=qƞH("g/{W(:5U3 ']c \A E|i.0 7?~|[.?ܰ(X]ws{g~Ak"')'-tdPI׹$ q-Bfb1F$p3y?)dr鯎5Ye,7ew.2])18 C:O1V'zq7>P}ẻF좪D%隔Y3֘+U(vRԝ sšcCZˤĎtWE^'rD”:[@˷>겎m(m~)u8 YM\Y`ZLR<2UNbEDL&cbnwkQ5%Ճc72!AIwVk~&ukC.@k LYsJ+d߭]઩+xJ0ܬELQW1gi+3o uߨr.NV8R{E7p=V'P#=6geyT)r}>j%W١VpU1PrPMTlgו=yM<Vj惙T-ELwvcvFI'˭%m )ĄmFں2RUq d=@3/Wz`WF#IXf^W;e.ۆ02۫h+bqW%UVUmDS gkΕ.LY+,i "'@R鰢W(S"+҅ WtHZ$eqKD> akn[G xg^O9A5Tö Fâ~f]LJ2I0xwF7Rd yžf2?ޓ]-&%R%]ID4Q~^>uг"aüv++)̞zO]l?7Z vRTglTj;8xME0$K"hs$˸^mmBhU'9 .îO۞ý/m%~)OWQ,(tN!pCt5oj Saqxp@,Ja04aȃ'/x/$+f/eT,zX%0~Û$S4ڮ~Jթ"U\گZGˤoOã PCM n){&P@~bJ鲣öd\58m%l>'8jPv}ۉT뉠}/p#{]lqf"nܗu;qI%X@~^%]_ jmBk)F$wEWuN7aV$a1^)"Ͼ{ǧR/xU}IM+phTFȲuMQY+n4KC3mWKda| T/)ajE*w*MXsݝU97%vP>9xVk/}wOH4Yי^ܸbVK~ ?,&l[b :tU^^NNr)g\ݶnKY-e \dZ[V6z3ضbCTWHkǼ$Ȧ xrOW(_ɎO}O^lԩzsøK>Q=ë L^E$~_jš<厬.uZn~uttMh8:_RAQXnPD/WX/piÎ}Ïai3);dkAFrix-. vMo5;q'-LbpYtkv}cwȭL^;UUSVpY?ԕ۝g
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1