Review | Cinder, Scarlet and Cress by Marissa Meyer

The Lunar Chronicles is a highly entertaining series which all fans of YA fantasy fiction will enjoy. I can’t wait for the next installment! 4/5 stars.

What it’s all about (thank you Wikipedia): The Lunar Chronicles is a series of YA fantasy novels. Each book entails a new take on an old fairy tale. The story takes place in a futuristic world where humans, cyborgs, and androids all coexist.

My take:

I’m so glad I waited until a few weeks before the last book in this series comes out to read the first three. As each one ended I was really looking forward to picking up the next. If I had to wait a year for Winter I’d be annoyed!

This is a fun, entertaining series which uses the well-known tales of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Snow White in original and sometimes irreverent ways. However, Marissa Meyer doesn’t over-rely on the old stories; instead she builds her own fantastical world and twists the tales to reinforce the many strands of her fast-paced, just-complex-enough plot.

Meyer also deserves credit for giving her readers a group of capable heroines. Cinder is a gifted mechanic, Scarlet’s a farmer and Cress is a computer programmer. That said, the author does well to give us her most likable heroine first and build the rest of the stories around hers. Cinder is refreshingly pragmatic and the fact she is physically incapable of crying or blushing is fantastic (although she would like to at times). Meanwhile, Scarlet is a little shouty and needs to calm down. Cress will hopefully toughen up with time – I was willing to forgive her for being a bit soppy as this seemed a realistic result of being imprisoned for seven years. We haven’t seen much of Winter yet, but she seems delightfully bonkers – we’ll have to wait and see.

Of the three books, I think Cinder (Book 1) is the strongest. However, I enjoyed them all. The plotting is impressive: I would guess Meyer planned a full series arc before writing Book 1. This means we’re not subjected to any “magic coincidences” but rather get to watch as fate steadily draws the characters together and apart in expected and unexpected ways.

These books aren’t ground-breaking and won’t change your life. But they will provide hours of absorbing, page-turning escapism – and what’s better than that?!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pre-order Winter!