Cress by Marissa Meyer- Review

Cress by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Publisher: Feiwel and Friends (2014)

Length: 550 pgs

Series: The Lunar Chronicles #3

Format: Hardcover, purchased from Target

Goodreads Synopsis: In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.

Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who’s only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.

My Review:

Cress is the most action-packed installment of the Lunar Chronicles so far. Now following the stories of three fairy-tale inspired heroines and their love interests, Marissa Meyer does an excellent job weaving together all three stories to form a cohesive, refreshing third person narrative that explores new Earthen regions, delves further into the mysterious Luna, tackles tragedy, and provides great character development for the whole cast.

Meyer has done a fantastic job in the series creating distinct identities for each fairy tale heroine, crafting their well-known literary back stories with her own interpretation of their personalities. Cress is an idealistic dreamer/genius computer hacker that’s suffered social isolation for close to a decade, yet she tries to see the good in people. Cress’ innocence and quirky personality balance out the sassy and outspoken Scarlet and the contemplative and hardworking Cinder. Cress also serves as a catalyst for the character development of Captain Thorne, and it was really fun to see him grow as a character.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, Review

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 3/5 Stars

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends (February 2013)

Length: 454 pgs

Series: The Lunar Chronicles, #2

Format: Paperback, purchased from my local independent bookstore

Goodreads Synopsis: Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison–even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive. Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

My Review:

Oh, Scarlet. I wanted to love you so so so much. I couldn’t put Cinder down, and after checking it out from the library I decided it was a series I had to start investing in, so I immediately purchased Scarlet and Cress. Am I still enthralled with the Lunar Chronicles? Definitely. Was I a little disappointed with the second installment? Yes.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s so many wonderful things about this book and about this series. Meyer manages to weaves Scarlet’s storyline, a girl who lives on a farm in rural France, seamlessly with the drama that’s transpiring in New Beijing with Cinder, Emperor Kai, and Queen Levana. It feels like Meyer didn’t add anything awkwardly on in the sequel that she hadn’t initially planned already, which is great, as it shows that she’s put a lot of forethought into the series (I’ve already picked up on clues that I’m certain will appear in Cress). Scarlet was a really fun and original take on the Little Red Riding Hood story, and the plot lines were a lot less predictable than those in Cinder (which I had figured out less than halfway throughout the book). There were several plot twists withing Scarlet that I didn’t anticipate, and it’s action packed despite taking place over the course of a little over 24 hours. Meyer had great character development in this book, and writing interesting characters seems to be a strength of hers. Here’s a round-up of the fantastic characters worth reading in Scarlet:

Character Round-up

Scarlet- Scarlet is independent, sassy, fiery (just like her hair) and has unwavering determination. In a lot of ways she’s similar to Cinder, being a great, proactive female protagonist with her own mind and agency. However, Scarlet is very impulsive while Cinder is thoughtful and cautious, and I sometimes wanted to shake her from her stubborn mindset and the risky decisions she barreled into head on.

Wolf- Wolf has received a lot of love amongst fans, and it’s easy to see why. His character is wonderfully complex, and he shifts from aggressive and wild to vulnerable and haunted multiple times withing the book. He’s kind of an anti-hero, and his allegiances are tricky to figure out. Even by the end of the book Wolf is still an enigma, in my edition there was a short story titled “The Queen’s Army” which gives a lot more background on Wolf.

Thorne- At first Thorne annoyed me, but by the end of the series I grew to love him as the essential comic relief juxtaposed to Cinder’s seriousness. He’s a pompous mixture between Gilderoy Lockhart and Sturmhond from Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo. Also, he’s the only American in the series so far, so do what you want with that.

Queen Levana- Scarlet and “The Queen’s Army” short story at the end of my edition of Scarlet provide readers with  the faintest cracks in the shiny, perfect veneer that encompasses the Lunar Queen. We see her in her natural habitat of Luna, and we start gaining insight into her mind through the perspective switch. That’s the nice thing about Meyer’s writing style is that she returns to the third person narration that is so lost within the YA fantasy genre. It allows her to enter different perspectives and follow different characters without sounding phony with multiple first person narrators.

Sacrlet has so much to offer- a wider look at the world after the fourth world war, the first scenes set in Luna, a storyline that strongly builds upon it’s predecessor, and vital information about Cinder’s past (such as how her surgeries were performed and why she has no memory prior to age 11). Yet it was only a three star read for me despite these great attributes because the beginning and middle really dragged for me. There was a lot of wandering around the forest and hiding from androids by Wolf and Scarlet, and though I like them both as characters, I felt that their “falling in love” was really unrealistic, especially considering the book takes place mostly over a 24 hour period. It was like they had a few interactions and all of the sudden they have these feelings for each other and I’m so confused because I barely remember how a romance between them even developed (insta-love at its finest I suppose). I think it was jarring because it was a big chance from Cinder where Cinder and Kai’s relationship slowly developed throughout the course of the book and is still in it’s fundamental developmental stages. So by the middle of Cinder I was dying to reach a chapter that switched to following Cinder and Thorne because it was so much more interesting to the awkward tension and creeping through the forest of Wolf and Scarlet’s plotlines.

Yet once everyone arrives in Paris things really picked up, and there were some great plot twists, lots of action, vital pieces of the puzzle came together, and I was hooked by the time the book finished. The Lunar Chronicles Series is still one of my favorites that I’ve discovered so far this year, and I’m eager to read Cress as well as anything else Meyer writes. I often times find the second book in a series to drag the most, so perhaps that’s what Meyer encountered (and to be fair, there was a lot of wandering through the forest in the original Little Red Riding Hood story). Scarlet is worth the read and worth continuing the series, it’s just not as engrossing as it’s predecessor Cinder. And if you can get your hands on the short story “The Queen’s Army” I’d highly recommend it, as it not only gives more insight to Wolf’s backstory, Levana, and Luna, but it brings up a lot of deeper topics in the series, such as bodily mutilation, a the creation and treatment of cyborgs, societal duty vs personal autonomy, and the toll of violence on the individual.

I would definitely recommend the Lunar Chronicles to anyone who loves YA dystopian, sci-fi, YA fantasy, and creative re-tellings of classic fairy tales (such as Once Upon a Time fans). I’m glad I’ve chosen to invest in this series, but had Scarlet been a standalone book I probably wouldn’t have bought it.

I was just recently made aware that the Lunar Chronicles are available in audio format from Macmillan Audio via Soundcloud, and that the first chapter of Scarlet can be previewed here. You can also check out the clip below! If you’re a fan of the Lunar Chronicles, check it out! To read my review of Scarlet, click here.

*The link to the Scarlet audiobook was provided to me by Macmillan Audio for an honest review. No compensation was received for my inclusion of the content.

 

 

Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Review

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4/5 Stars

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends (January 2012)

Length: 387 pgs

Series: The Lunar Chronicles, #1

Format: Hardcover, checked out from local library

Goodreads Synopsis: Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

My Review:

The one thought that dominates my mind when I think of Cinder: “Why didn’t I read this book sooner?” I’d seen it heavily marketed and on many to-read lists, but I was honestly turned off by the sci-fi aspect, as it’s not a genre that I usually gravitate towards. But Cinder combines sci-fi seamlessly with traditional fairytale folklore (if you haven’t guess already, structurally it’s based on the fairytale of Cinderella) and the result is a wonderful, fun, and fast read that had me immediately purchasing the sequel, Scarlet, the next day.

Now, why some may call the plot predictable, I didn’t mind because it gave me a firm framework for the story to hold on to while I read despite not being very familiar with the sci-fi aspects (I admit, this is my first experience reading a book with cyborgs). Marissa Meyer does a decent job with world building, and more and more details about Cinder’s world are revealed throughout the course of the book: the time period is after World War IV, Earth has been re-distributed into new continents that provide and interesting hybridization of today’s cultures (the Eastern Commonwealth, the European Federation, etc), technology has led to colonization of the moon (Sailor Moon inspired-references!) and a plague (the “blue fever,” a parallel to the bubonic plague) is ravaging the Earth.

Though many of the characters in Cinder were fairytale tropes from Cinderella, their nuances and the way that Meyer played on these stereotypes were really interesting to read. Cinder, who has no memory past age 11, is a cyborg, mechanic, witty, strong, determined, and has the resilience of her fairytale-inspiration: no matter how often she gets beat down by her stepmother and society, she does what she feels is right (note that she isn’t idealistically self sacrificing all the time) and develops close relationships with the few androids and humans who show her compassion. Cinder is definitely not a damsel-in-distress type, and her relationship and encounters with Prince Kai (whom is so endearing, I love reading about a good guy for a change) are humorous but also somewhat realistic, and she acknowledges the social and political barriers that divide them. Adri, Cinder’s stepmother, and her stepsister Pearl are deliciously awful, antagonists that readers will love to hate, but pale in comparison to the real villain, which is an element Meyer adds in that deviates from the Cinderella storyline a bit and makes the novel more original. Iko, Dr. Erland, and Peony are also peripheral characters worth mentioning, and all secondary characters serve to enhance and grow Cinder’s characters through her interactions with her.

Meyer also doesn’t focus on Cinder’s looks, but more on her capabilities and technologies, as both a person and a cyborg, a breath of fresh air in the YA (and fairytale) genre where the protagonists are stunningly-unassuming beauties that the male instantly falls for. Cinder may be influenced by a fairytale, but she shows agency and capability far more than any males in the series, and her strength cannot be questioned.

Cinder was a fast read that sucked me in and had me flipping the pages, engaged by the hybrid of fairytale familiarity from my childhood and sci-fi world building from Meyer’s own imagination. As in fairytales, many of the situations in the book were moral dilemmas for the characters, and reading about their struggles and choices were interesting and thought-provoking, especially as they could be real problems our society faces in the future. Notable was the repulsion by the general human population toward cyborgs, humans who have a degree of prosthetic limbs and central wiring implanted in surgeries to humans who have suffered what would usually be fatal injuries. While I would be inclined to think these people are medical marvels (and often have cool abilities from their surgeries), society views cyborgs as “disgusting,” and the book thus provides an interesting view on discrimination that I hope is explored further through the next few books.

Yet the book was not the deepest nor the most intricate in world building that I’ve read in YA fantasy/fiction this year (Days of Blood and Starlight comes to mind), there’s such fun in reading a new twist of a classic story, even if I had guessed one of the major plot points early on (though there were some other curveballs I enjoyed that surprised me while reading). I literally went to my local, independent bookstore the next day and picked up Scarlet, the sequel, because I cannot wait to continue indulging in this alternative world, and I recently discovered that the entire series will be comprised of books with fairytale twists (Scarlet is based on Little Red Ridinghood)! The Lunar Chronicles are fun yet familiar reads due to their fairy tale roots that can appeal to many readers of many genres, due to its hybrid nature. Whether you’re a Grimms Brothers/Disney-buff, sci-fi fan, or general fantasy lover, Cinder is definitely worth your time.