With vivid imagery, subtle menace, and a deeply human message, The Weaver is a deep and twisting tale of lasting power that will reward multiple readings.

Itäranta’s refined prose centers the story on the growing love between the two women while also touching on the unspoken, horrific violence against women and other oppressed groups.

Itäranta delivers another lyrical dystopian novel. Those willing to put in the time will get a nuanced heroine, a tender love story, and lovely prose.

Itäranta writes engagingly, displaying her setting and atypical characters in full color. Both seasoned readers of fantasy and newcomers to the genre will savor Itäranta’s captivating fiction.

The City of Woven Streets is a thoroughly beautiful novel, enchanting and dreamlike. The world of the book is rich, full of vivid details and secrets dormant under the surface. It keeps revealing new sides without fully exposing itself.

Itäranta writes elegantly, carefully listening to the rhythmic flow of each sentence and expression. The paths she builds into the story hint towards what is to come or explain what has passed, and the plot she has weaved holds its tensions right up to the end.

The way the author depicts the world she has created is concrete, sense-evoking. The fantasy society has been constructed to include vocabulary, objects and infrastructure. … It’s as if the language of the narration was a weave itself, airy, beautiful, mysterious. The City of Woven Streets is a captivatingly told thriller, which holds deep truths about authority, freedom and the power of love.

Itäranta braids at least three kinds of weaves to bind her book. The base is in the strong plot, which keeps the reader nicely captivated. … The language of The City of Woven Streets is at its best when the author, in a melancholy, declarative way, describes the inevitable battle against injustice and for humanity.

From the fascinating scenes and finely constructed characters Itäranta knits a mesmerizing weave, in which a humane touch extends through even the wildest plot twists. In the end all the riddles reaching into the past, the imaginative sceneries and the webs of lies are merely one element in a story that glows with love and the fragility of human life at its core.

The world of Emmi Itäranta’s new fantasy novel is more original and profound than the northern dystopia of her debut. In that sense the new novel fulfils the expectations aimed at the internationally awarded author.

The City of Woven Streets, written simultaneously in Finnish and English by the Finn Emmi Itäranta, is timeless sci-fi about an isolated island where dreaming is forbidden.

In the beginning the plot is somewhat slow to progress, towards the end the pace picks up and the story is woven into an interesting conclusion. The narration is coiled and winding and the world pleasantly weird.