Winter: The Lunar Chronicles
Author: Marissa Meyer
Genre: YA/Fairy-Tale Retelling
Grade: A-
First off I did a little happy dance because I actually finished a series! (Don’t tell me if there’s going to be another one.)
The Lunar Chronicles has followed the story of Cinder the lost Princess of Luna as she makes friends, whom happen to bear startling similarities to fairy-tale characters we would know, and fights to take back her crown from the evil mind-controlling Queen Levana.
Each book has expanded on the universe and Winter brings it home to Luna (the moon) and adds the beautiful, kindly and kind of crazy Princess Winter to the mix and all the Snow White elements that go with the story. There’s even an apple.
This ones a long one and it jumps back and forth between the main points-of-view. These books at this point can pretty much be broken down into couples (Cinder and Kai, Scarlet and Wolf, Thorne and Cress and lastly Winter and her palace guard Jacin.) As much as I liked the book and the story it really did all come down to the love stories and it got kind of tiring. I was like I know, I know you love each other! You’re his Alpha! He’d do anything for you! I get it move on!
Actually, my favorite relationship in all the books might be the android Iko and Cinder. You know you have a friend for life when they take you apart and fix your wiring.
The dialogue and the characters are consistent but a couple of things stood out and kind of bugged me. One when Cinder is looking out over hundreds of people who are willing to fight and die for her and she’s like willing to take control of any of their minds, willing to sacrifice any of them but then she gets to one of her friends and the “main characters” and that changes. It’s an honest thought yes but it was also kind of cold and just bugged me.
Also there’s an act of (admittedly mind-controlled) violence within one of the relationships at the end that’s almost completely swept aside. It was pretty brutal and while I admit it was mind-controlled I would still imagine that realistically a person would have problems being around the person who actually did it. Very much not the case here.
It’s probably nitpicking in a book that I really did enjoy. Plus it’s called Winter and since it’s still hovering around eighty degrees where I live I’ll take what I can get.
Recommend: Yes. Despite my issues with the book I thought the ending more than held up and closed the series out very nicely. Plus, I finished a series! I finished a series!
FYI- It’s not very imaginative at all but I couldn’t help picture Regina from Once Upon a Time as Queen Levana. For what it’s worth I think she’d kill it.
Favorite Book of the Series- Going to have to go with the first: Cinder.