ALTERED

Creweler-to-be Adelice, her lover, Jost, and his brother, Erik, have fled Arras (Crewel, 2012) and seek to fight the Guild on Earth.

Earth is divided between the Guild and its mining operations and the Sunrunners who control the solar-energy trade. In fairly short order, the trio meet Dante, a friendly Sunrunner, and are attacked by a band of Remnants—the living shells of humans left behind after a Spinster has “ripped” their souls. (Horrifyingly, one is what’s left of Adelice’s mother.) The plot thickens when Dante takes them to Kincaid, the megalomaniac at the top of the Sunrunner organization. (In a nice touch, his headquarters is Hearst Castle.) Relationships and alliances develop and shift at a dizzying rate. Most notable is the tiresomely predictable triangle among Adelice, Jost and Erik, but the bond Adelice discovers she shares with Dante calls her entire past into question. In dialogue, Adelice demonstrates spunk and a sense of humor, but unfortunately, this does not inform her flat, standard-issue-dystopian present-tense narration. Albin provides further background on the physics and history of Arras, but just exactly how Adelice is able to see and manipulate the raw strands of energy that form Earth’s reality as well as the construct that is Arras are still left for readers to accept on faith, frustrating those who like science in their science fiction.

For fans only, a bridge between Crewel and Book 3