The City of Woven Streets

''This night is different. Sleep is thin in the house, because strange blood is drying on the stones of the square.''What is left when even the ability to dream (literally) is considered a crime? And even worse, when your dreams are nightmares for which you may be punished severely? You are marked by society, exiled to the House of the Tainted, the left-overs of the community.I tend to approach every book that wishes to belong to the Dystopian genre with extreme cautiousness. First of all, when [b:1984 5470 1984 George Orwell https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348990566s/5470.jpg 153313] and [b:The Handmaid's Tale 38447 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1546031886s/38447.jpg 1119185] grace my bookcase, there's bound to be a comparison. Secondly, everyone and their mother have decided to write a dystopian novel of late and I have always had a slight disliking for things that are en vogue. However, Emmi Itäranta comes from Finland and call me biased, but I would even read a phone book if it was written by an author from the Nordic lands. And thus, I ventured into The City of Woven Streets. The title is extremely intriguing and the two themes on which the story is built are dreaming and isolation. This society isn't as bleak and dark as others we have come across. It is made beautiful by the intricate webs created in the House of Weavers. In this dystopia, governed by the Council, dreaming is not allowed. Dreaming equals Freedom, the Council cannot control the thoughts of the islanders and this is toxic to them and their regime. This is a very interesting premise on Itäranta's part. We've seen many kinds of totalitarian societies, but not one where occupation is so absolute, so extreme that stretches into the most private, personal, solitary activity of a human being, that of sleeping. ''First the monster swallows you, then it digests you and eventually you come out of the other end feeling filthy.''The night terrors can be quite a shocking experience. I used to suffer from sleep paralysis during my university years when my anxiety level was sky-high. Naturally, we know that science has explained this weird phenomenon to the point of exhaustion, but still, I cannot avoid thinking how its traces approach the thin line between the Natural and the Supernatural worlds. In the novel, the writer makes good use of the myth of the night-maere (as is the original spelling), the Old Hag as it is also called. In Greece, we call it ‘‘Mora'' and the people of the past used to believe that it was a demon, visiting those who were ‘‘unclean'', targeted by the devil. Not unsimilar to the belief of the Council in the story. Here, the dominant religion is organised around a mysterious figure of many faces called Our Lady of Weaving, a combination of many goddesses of the European pantheons, and a divinity we never come to know much about.''A wind does not rise. A rain does not come. The dead stay dead, and do not respond.''''Do you look at this island and believe you see the truth?''Placing a dystopian community within the narrow space of an island makes the feeling of isolation and enclosure tense and atmospheric. The mists arising from the waters cover the city and the characters' actions. There is no contact between Eliana and her brother, except for the times when he comes to visit her.All these must sound very interesting and, believe me they are, but there are a few weaknesses as well. The plot becomes tedious after a point. All the talk and the details about the different kinds of ink and their ingredients become boring and slow down the narration. Around the 60% mark, it became too wordy, with long descriptions that offer nothing new and I began to lose interest. Worse, I started feeling confused, losing touch with the plot and this doesn't happen often. The characters are nothing to write home about, to be honest. Eliana is a nice, sympathetic heroine, clever, loyal, developing an interesting relationship with Valeria- a rather mysterious presence- but nothing we haven't seen before.I don't know if it is considered a YA novel as I am not familiar with the category, but I can say that it is an interesting book, a nice addition to the Dystopia genre and I definitely intend to read [b:Memory of Water 18505844 Memory of Water Emmi Itäranta https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389990493s/18505844.jpg 18908129] by the same author. However, The City of Woven Streets, as well-written as it may be, is not [b:The Handmaid's Tale 38447 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1546031886s/38447.jpg 1119185] for the younger generation.