Marissa Meyer

I read [b:Cinder|11235712|Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)|Marissa Meyer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388186881s/11235712.jpg|15545385] last year and quite enjoyed it, it’s taken a year to get around to the sequel and I really wish I’d read it sooner. I enjoyed Scarlet much more than Cinder with the elements that annoyed me a little in the first gone, some great new characters and a better paced plot. I couldn’t put it down!

The clue is in the title, Scarlet is a retelling of Little show more Red Riding Hood but we still check in with what Cinder is up to escaping from her prison cell following the events of the ball at the end of the last book. Scarlet is a farm girl from France who is on a mission to find out what happened to her missing Grandmother, and she is aided by a mysterious young man named Wolf. This story fleshes out some more of Cinder’s background too.

I loved Scarlet! She’s gutsy and sassy and she goes for what she wants. Wolf was a bit less well developed but I just mainly enjoyed the fact that in my head he looked like Channing Tatum (thanks to the masterpiece that is Jupiter Ascending, wolven genetic enhancements mean Tatum in my brain). Cinder I also found much more impressive in this book at taking charge and getting stuff done, and I love the idea of her new go-go-gadget hand. Space Rogue (criminal) “Captain” Thorne was also a lot of fun in a crapper version of Han Solo kind of way. Prince Kai gets a few chapters too to keep us up to date on the political situation but he’s still so dull.

It is a much more action packed novel with fights, space ships, genetically engineered wolf-men, and Cinder’s new found lunar powers. The whole thing is kind of a riot and I loved it. It’s silly and bonkers but it’s a science-fiction fairy tale and I loved it. It is a year since I read Cinder but I felt like Meyer’s writing had improved too, and her world is expanding to feel much better fleshed out and believable.
I need to get my hands on Cress somehow! From the cover I’m guessing this will be Rapunzel. show less

Summary: Scarlet Benoit grew up wither her grandmother on a farm in France. Now her grandmother's gone missing, and no one seems to care… no one except Wolf. He's a hardened street fighter, but Scarlet can sense there's more to him than just his tough exterior. She's drawn to him, but she doesn't trust him, because she knows that there's something - maybe a lot of things - that he's not telling her. But she might not have any choice but to trust him, especially since he has information show more that might help her find her grandmother. Their journey to Paris is dangerous - and it becomes even more so when they encounter Cinder, freshly broken out of prison, and determined to find out more about her origins… something that will become important if she's going to stop the evil Lunar Queen Levana from conquering the world.

Review: Even though I didn't like Scarlet *quite* as much as Cinder, this series continues to be imaginative, fast-paced, and fun. I always enjoy fairy tale retelling, so I went in to this one expecting to enjoy it, especially since I've read some really darkly fascinating takes on Little Red Riding Hood before (“Little Red” by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple, and "Red Riding-Hood’s Child" by N. K. Jemisin). (Confession time: I had picked this book up AFTER I had read Cinder and knew that these books were retold fairytales. I saw the words "Scarlet" and "Wolf" and "Grandmother" all over the back cover, and had looked at the giant swath of red fabric on the front cover. And yet, it somehow totally failed to click in my brain that this was Little Red Riding Hood until someone in my book club mentioned it an hour or so later. Whoops! I totally got that Cress was Rapunzel all on my own, though.)

Anyways, this book uses those elements of the fairy tale, the wolf who is not what he appears to be and the red hoodie and the grandmother in danger, but I felt like otherwise it didn't stick particularly close to the story of the fairy tale - not in the same way that Cinder did, for sure. That's okay - I can appreciate thematic similarities as well as plot similarities - but the fact that it was striking out on its own for a fair bit of the story meant that I didn't often get the same little thrill of recognition as when Cinder's cyborg foot falls off on the steps of the palace. The story it tells, though, is an interesting one, and even though I figured out a fair bit of what was going on well ahead of the characters, I still enjoyed the ride. I liked Scarlet as a heroine, and I liked Wolf quite a bit - he's got some interesting depth to his character that makes him very sympathetic, and while their relationship seemed a little contrived at first, I was on board by the end. (Confession time again: I couldn't help but picture Wolf as Hugh Jackman in full beefed-up superhero mode (including the sideburns) even though that's not how he's described. But I have to say… it didn't hurt.) Cinder's chapters were also good fun - Thorne's an interesting new addition, and I was happy to see the return of Iko - and Meyer handled the interweaving of Scarlet's and Cinder's stories quite neatly.

Overall, while this book is neither Serious Literature nor quite as good as its predecessor, it's still interesting and fun and an easy read with some imaginative sci-fi twists on familiar fairy tales. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Even though Scarlet's storyline is (largely but not entirely) independent of Cinder's, so much of the worldbuilding and the motivation for this story comes from the first book that they should be read in order. The series as a whole should definitely appeal to people who like YA sci-fi and/or retold fairy tales. show less

Cinder: 390 pages
Scarlet: 452 pages
Cress: 550 pages
Winter: 824 pages

Holy hell Marissa Meyer, is this scifi YA or epic fantasy?! Talk about word-count creep. The pages in this thing are bible thin.

Anyway, what a fantastic end to the series! Definitely the strongest of the core tetralogy (I really liked the prequel side novel, Fairest). Scarlet gets a chance to shine in this book in a way she didn't in the previous books, even the one bearing her name. Her long imprisonment has given her a show more sardonic sense of humor and a give no fucks attitude and she moves major parts of the plot forward. Her relationship with Wolf finally cements itself before being threatened again in a really interesting way that ends in a not quite happily ever after so much as a, "we'll figure it out." Her relationship with Winter is endlessly entertaining and adorable as well, Scarlet seems to be the only one unwilling to coddle Winter's mental illness and routinely calls her crazy and forces her to achieve more than she thinks she can, but you can tell she truly cares for her at the same time.

Speaking of Winter, man, do I love Winter a whole lot. What a beautiful cinnamon roll of a character. She's crazy, but she's not. She's strong, but fragile. She's principled, but naive. Her choice not to use her Lunar mind control powers and deal with the resulting mental illness was already touching in Cress, but learning the reasons behind her choice make me love her even more. It's a choice based in pacifism, philosophy, morality, and free will. As a child she prevented a woman from committing suicide by making her happy, only to have her do it anyway a few days later. Afterwards she found out the woman killed herself because she was being tormented by a thaumaturge and that the torture was prolonged because of Winter's intervention. Winter then realized that nobody is capable of deciding what is good for anyone else, that even a completely altruistic motive doesn't make influencing someone else's thoughts and emotions any less abhorrently wrong. She seems to be the only one that sees the Lunar "gift" for what it truly is--the true antagonist of the series. It's not Levana, it's the gift itself. These are things even Cinder doesn't seem to fully grasp until the end of the book, and even then I don't think she's willing to go far enough to change things. She offers the lock-out device to Earth, but if you really think about it, shouldn't that be something forcibly installed in every Lunar citizen? Extreme? Maybe. Necessary? Absolutely. For a girl that is so sheltered, so naive in so many ways, Winter is secretly the wisest character in the entire series.

Levana plays a larger role in this book than any of the previous three, since this is set on Luna. After reading Fairest I came away loving that we got to see unfiltered Levana, but also glad that it was contained within a side novel because she is more than capable of stealing the show. Meyer does a great job here of letting Levana off the leash but not letting her take over. Long stretches go by where we don't see what she's up to and then suddenly she comes out of left field with a devious plan that makes you seethe with the burning rage of a thousand suns while at the same time admiring her cunning. Gotta love a villain that truly gets your blood boiling. Bitch makes me so mad! Ugh! Be she got hers, lemme tell ya!

There's not a whole let left to say and I'm too full of love for this book to say any of it coherently anyway. I love all of these characters so, so much. It's so rare in fiction that I love all the characters I'm supposed to, rather than just a couple favorites that keep me engaged enough to stay and see the plot unfold. Cinder, Cress, Scarlet, Winter, Iko, Thorne, Wolf, Kai, Jacin. I love them all deeply, and it's bittersweet to see them go. I wish them well. show less

Summary: Cinder is a young woman and a gifted mechanic… well, she's mostly a young woman. She's actually a cyborg, with mechanical components installed in a surgery when she was a girl - a surgery that marks the beginning of her memory, with everything before it a frightening blank. She was adopted by a scientist named Garan, but he died shortly thereafter from letumosis, a virulent plague that's been ravaging the population. That left Cinder in the "care" of Adri, who treats her as little show more more than a possession. And in truth, cyborgs are very much second-class citizens, leaving Cinder with no real friends except for Iko, an android with a malfunctioning personality chip, and Peony, Adri's youngest daughter. Then one day, a customer at Cinder's stall turns out to be the handsome Prince Kai in disguise, seeking help for one of his androids. Cinder's taken with him, and he seems to like her, but she knows it can never work… he's got more important things on his mind, like negotiating peace with the powerful and dangerous Queen Levanna, from Luna. Plus, he's a prince… and she knows he would be disgusted if he ever found out her true cyborg nature.

Review: Why did no one sit me down and tell me to read this two years ago? C'mon, people! You're all fired. (Myself included. I should have been all over this well before now.)

This book was right smack up the middle of my alley. I love fairy tales, I love fairy tale retellings, and I especially love when they're done in a creative way. Cinder does a bang-up job of it, keeping all of the recognizable elements of the familiar story, but tweaking all of them into a new context (I mean, it's Cinderella, but you know from the first line that she's not exactly going to be losing a slipper so much as a foot!), and adding enough subplots to keep things interesting. Meyer's writing is light and easy and mostly unobtrusive, allowing the story to take center stage. (Although I did notice a few errors in the e-book. A "coy pond" full of fish; ouch.)

The plague angle added some interesting elements and emotions to the story, and allowed Meyer to bring in some darker aspects to the book. The whole bit with the Lunar Queen and the Lunars' powers was a little bit far-fetched - maybe closer to fantasy than sci-fi - but it's used well, and there are lots of interesting possibilities as to where the story can go from here. I did figure out Cinder's backstory basically right away, but then, fairy tales are by their nature a little predictable, so I can't fault it too much for that. But the best part was definitely the characters. The villains were appropriately villainous, Peony was adorable, and Iko stole most of the scenes she was in. Cinder and Kai were both believable as young people trying to figure out their place in the world as best they can, and extremely likable to boot. Overall, I had a lot of fun reading this one, and I'll definitely be reading the sequels. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: There's a huge market in teen SF/F these days, and this is definitely a worthwhile entry in the genre. Fans of fairy tales and/or futuristic (semi-dystopian) sci-fi should all really enjoy this one. show less