THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Okay, so. I binge-read this series and. Well. There are a lot of things I want to talk about because THIS SERIES MADE ME EMOTIONAL (in a good way!).
Now the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer is a relatively older series (I think the first book in the series was published in 2012), so there isn’t a lot of hype around the books anymore. But, I’ve had this book on my to-be-read list for a long time and I finally decided to read it and thank goodness I wasn’t disappointed.
“Even in the Future the Story Begins with Once Upon A Time”
Cinder
This entire series takes place in the future and combines elements of science fiction and YA fantasy into the story. There are four books (with two novellas) in the series and they all loosely are based on fairytales. Cinder, is the first novel in the series and is based on, can you guess? Cinderella. In saying so, there aren’t A LOT of Cinderella references in the novel, hence why I said these books are loosely based on a fairytale.
So, in Cinder, we are introduced to Cinder, a teenage cyborg who is a really good mechanic. However, as a cyborg, she’s considered as a second class citizen in this universe, and is heavily victimised and verbally abused by her step-mother and ONE of her step-sisters. She works at the marketplace in New Beijing (yes, she’s Asian!) fixing androids and droids and other hi-tech machines. She is often accompanied by her own android friend, Iko, and her nicer step-sister Peony as well.
Currently, humans and cyborgs on Earth are being killed off by a deadly plague and one day while working in the marketplace, it was discovered that one of the shoppers had the plague. Peony was unfortunate and caught the deadly disease and of course Cinder was blamed for her illness (which is… stupid because she literally cannot control how the disease spreads but her step-family is supposed to be evil so who cares I guess?). As a result of her step-mother’s anger Cinder was unwillingly volunteered to be a lab rat for scientists and doctors to experiment on in order to find a cure for the plague. But, while being tested and experimented on it was discovered that for some reason Cinder had immunity to the disease, which was unheard of.
Amongst all of this, Cinder was also given the task of fixing Prince Kai’s android, Nansi, who was in the middle of researching the lost Princess of Lunar. Yup, that’s right. At some point humans were able to live and create a civilisation on the Moon. However, over time the Lunars on the moon adapted and changed and are considered as a different race entirely. Using the excuse of fixing the android, Cinder and the Prince ended up spending a lot of time together, they kept running into each other for one reason or another (maybe they fall in love, who knows?).
Not to mention, the Emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth (which includes New Beijing) had somehow caught the plague. So, with the Eastern Commonwealth weakened by the Emperor’s deteriorating health and a plague killing off their people, the Queen of Lunar, Levana, took that as an opportunity to attempt to forge a marriage alliance with Prince Kai. That alliance would give her the stepping stone to conquering the planet. (Just to clarify the countries and territories are kind of reorganised, so if you’re a bit confused right now, don’t worry the novel deals with this point in more detail).
Right of the bat that plot sounds interesting enough for me to love this first book. There is more than one storyline, one plot with a lot of subplots, multiple motivations; basically the plot and storyline is complex.
We get both Cinder and Kai’s POV in the novel, but let me talk about Cinder first. Cinder is very much just concerned about finding a cure to help her step-sister Peony. Finding that cure is really the only major motivation Cinder has and it’s a reasonable one. Cinder was adopted into the family by her step-father however, after his death the only family she really has is her android Iko and Peony she could rely on. The large majority of this book does focus a lot of Cinder’s concern for her sister and there is a lot of focus on the dynamics of her family.
However, once Peony dies by the plague, Cinder ends up in a difficult situation. She helps the doctor as much as she can to find a cure, but eventually, she found out that Kai intended on marrying Queen Levana, because the Queen had a cure to the plague. But, Cinder found out about Levana’s plan to take over Earth and tried to warn him about the Queen’s plan. So, from worrying about her family, she now worries about the faith of her planet and her complicated emotions for the Prince.
One of the things I loved about Prince Kai was how developed of a character he was. His POV chapters give us more of an idea just how hard his role as Prince (and then Emperor) really is. While Cinder’s problems revolve around her family, Kai’s problems revolve around keeping the planet safe. As Emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth, he has over 1 billion people to care about and that also means he has 1 billion people to protect from the Lunar Queen’s tyranny. The Earthen alliance with Lunar is fragile and Earth is basically useless if they ever got into a war with Lunar, so navigating the Queen’s proposal while dealing with the deaths of millions of people is a lot. So, there’s a lot of political intrigue.
Speaking about the Lunar Queen, Levana had made it perfectly clear from the beginning that she is not to be trusted and that her ultimate goal is to rule both the Moon and Earth. She is ruthless and merciless – rumour has it she used her mind control ability to make her own step-daughter Winter, mutilate her face because her step-daughter was more beautiful than her. My only issue with Levana was that I personally feel that she would have been a more terrifying villain if she didn’t announce her plans to everyone. Imagine how much more frightening she would have been if she kept to herself a little bit.
Now, finally let’s talk about Iko, my dear Iko. She is an android and Cinder’s best friend and she is the sassiest Emperor Kai fangirl out there. She’s a character who brings a bit of comic relief to the story since the plot is pretty grim and dark most of the time. That’s it. She’s sassy and she’s my favourite character. That’s all you need to know about Iko.
My only issue with Cinder is that I would have LOVED to read more about the Lunars. I mean, the Lunars are portrayed as this ‘superior’ race with mind control abilities and we know almost nothing about them except for the fact that they don’t like Levana and that Levana is mind-controlling them into submission. So, more would have been better. But then again, I did like the mystery of not knowing.
“I lied to you about a lot of things…but I meant every apology”
Scarlet
So, Scarlet was my least favourite book in the series (my favourite is definitely Cinder and Winter). This novel is loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood. This novel focuses on a new character Scarlet (and if you’re interested Scarlet has red hair and is always wearing her signature red hoodie) and Wolf. Cinder and Kai still have POV chapters, however, Scarlet is the main focus of this novel.
Cinder ends with Cinder being taken into custody for supposedly trying to harm Prince Kai and for being a Lunar runaway (Lunars who leave the Moon are seen as criminals and are punished by death), and Scarlet begins with Cinder trying to break out of prison. Now a fugitive, she travels to France looking for a woman who helped her get to Earth from Lunar back when she was a child. In France, that same woman has gone missing and her granddaughter, Scarlet, is worried sick looking for her.
While looking for her grandmother, Scarlet meets Wolf, a street fighter who has information about where her grandmother is but he also has a hidden agenda. When Scarlet’s father returns anxious and scared she finds out that a gang had kidnapped her grandmother suspecting she has information about Cinder/Princess Selene’s location. That gang works for Queen Lavena who is trying to kill Cinder because she poses a threat to her crown. However, when Scarlet finally finds her grandmother, only for her to die, it’s revealed that Wolf was part of the gang who kidnapped her and that he was leading Scarlet into a trap.
Eventually, Cinder finds Scarlet and Wolf and their storylines meet. Scarlet and Wolf decide to help Cinder take down Levana. But, back in New Beijing, Kai has announced that as long as Levana gives them the antidote to the plague, he will marry her and make her the Empress of the Eastern Commonwealth. Though he knows of the Lunar Queen’s plans to take over the Earth, he decided to put his people first and now the wedding preparations are starting to be planned out. All the while he is worried sick about Cinder, while his feelings for Cinder are complicated, he slowly discovers who she really is and silently hopes that she is safe.
While Scarlet was the main character, I really just wanted to read more about Cinder. Cinder was the one who got me interested in this series so not having a lot of POV chapters by her and Kai made my heart ache. (Also, in case I didn’t make it clear above, Cinder is the lost Lunar Princess Selene who was rumoured to have been burned alive by Queen Levana when she was a baby).
So, Scarlet. Where do I start? Scarlet on her own is a very feisty and kind of a mean character, while Cinder is more humble and self-sacrificing. I liked Scarlet’s personality, truly, Scarlet’s badness balances out Cinder’s goodness and makes the two females very interesting.
However, my major issue with this second novel is her relationship with Wolf. The first book took place over a couple of months, while this novel all took place in a week. Her relationship with Wolf, thus, felt too rushed and fake. Cinder and Kai’s romance and the relationship feels more realistic and enjoyable to read because of how it developed – from friendship at first, to love over a longer time period. Whereas, Scarlet and Wolf’s relationship was just to ‘insta-lovey’ for my liking.
Also, Wolf is nicknamed ‘Wolf’ because he and his gang were genetically re-engineered with Wolf genes by Levana’s scientists. So, his gang is a Pack and he’s actually an Alpha. Now, I get it this is a sci-fi fantasy novel BUT I have read a lot of werewolf books on Wattpad and I cannot take anything Alpha and Luna related characters seriously (it was an embarrassing time of my life and I am not proud of it). Also, Wolf made Scarlet his mate and so she’s his Luna and the codependency that stems from that relationship (mainly evident in the third novel, Cress) is concerning and a little bit annoying. In Cress, Scarlet was kidnapped and taken as a prisoner to Lunar and Wolf was… literally useless without her. Yes, it can be interpreted that he missed her but… if their relationship went through some more development maybe I would view it differently.
On a positive note, there was one thing I did like about their relationship: I really like what their relationship stood for. Since Wolf was genetically re-engineered with more Wolf-like features (a larger jaw, a bit of a hunchback, fangs), his relationship with Scarlet tells readers that it is what on the inside that matters not what you see on the outside. They’re kind of the physical representation of ‘never judge a book by its cover’ because Wolf’s physical appearance does bother him and he was terrified that Scarlet wouldn’t accept him (she did accept him). I liked that message, especially since Levana represents the complete opposite of what Wolf stands for: that beauty is everything (which it isn’t, personality also matters). Also, their bonding moment over tomatoes is pretty cute. You can read the novel to understand what I mean by that.
“I promise, I will not let you die without being kissed.”
Cress
Cress is honestly the cutest and most awkward character in the entire series and if I had to identify myself with a character I’d say I’m more of a Cress. Now, this novel still has Cinder, Kai, Wolf and Scarlet POV chapters, but Cress and Captain Thorne are the main characters and the story is very much focused on those two. In Scarlet, Thorne had helped Cinder escape prison, so he was introduced in the second novel, however, he is paired up with Cress so he plays a larger role in this novel. Also, this novel is loosely based on Rapunzel.
Currently, Cinder and her team on the Rampion (the ship Captain Thorne stole and is being used to take the team where they need to be) are all fugitives on the run. They’re planning on overthrowing Queen Levana and stopping the wedding. But, to do that they need Cress, a girl who has been imprisoned by Lunars on a satellite since childhood. She is the one who does all of Queen Levana’s dirty work, hacking into emails, security servers etc. (she’s an amazing hacker) but she’s not on Levana’s side; she helped Cinder out back in the first book and now Cinder needs Cress’ help again.
The team plans on rescuing Cress from her satellite prison but the mission goes horribly wrong and the group is separated. Scarlet is kidnapped and taken to Lunar and is given as a gift to the ‘crazy’ Princess Winter, Cress and Thorne crash land in the Sahara on Earth and Jacin, a Lunar Soldier joins Cinder, Wolf and Iko on the Rampion. Their plan to prevent Kai’s marriage alliance with Lunar still stands, now they just have to find a way to do it while on another continent.
Cress is a hopeless romantic, while stuck up in her satellite she’s been researching everyone on Cinder’s team out of pure curiosity and fell in love with an image of Captain Thorne that she made up in her head. Now, she convinced that he’s a good person and not just a guy who makes dumb decisions. The downside, however, is that she’s been stuck in space for years and has had almost no social interactions with anyone else except for her Lunar captors who only visit for a couple of minutes at a time.
Thorne, on the other hand, is a natural flirt and is always talking. Always. (My favourite Thorne moment was in Winter when he suggested Cinder put rice in her head because she short-circuited after getting wet. That’s hilarious, I think we should give him some credit for the android jokes). He is adamant that he is not the person Cress thinks he is; while Cress thinks of him as a hero, Thorne thinks of himself as nothing but a troublemaker and that Cress deserves more.
After the two crash-landed in the Sahara, they try and find their way back to Cinder so they can proceed with their plan to stop Levana. But as a result of the crash, Thorne had temporarily lost his vision and Cress had to be the one to guide him (evidently this retelling follows the Grimms’ Brother’s version where the Prince lost his sight after falling into a bush of thorns). But eventually, they do end up back with Cinder and though they don’t have Scarlet with them, they decide to act against the Queen. However, Cress comes back broken-hearted, by the end of the novel she’s accepted that as much as she loves Captain Thorne, the person she really loved was just all in her head. Thorne, on the other hand, has fallen head over heels for Cress and has no idea how to tell her (WE LOVE THESE KINDS OF SITUATIONS OKAY).
This book ends with the Rampion team actually kidnapping Emperor Kai, they hoped that his kidnapping would buy them some time to plan ahead as to how they can defeat Levana. His reunion with Cinder was a little bit awkward and filled with tension. But fear not, they worked it out (and they are most definitely in love) and the novel ends with them making their final plans against the evil Lunar Queen.
Thorne and Cress are without a doubt my favourite couple in this whole series. Yes, I love Cinder and Kai, and Jacin and Winter as well but, there’s just something that keeps me interested in Cress and Thorne. I think it’s because their relationship by far had the most drama and angst. They were the couple who loved each other but couldn’t be together because they broke each other’s hearts. It’s sad, it’s dramatic (and frustrating to read about), but at the end of the final book Winter, Cress had her dream kiss with Thorne, so all’s well it ends well.
My main issue with this novel was that I just wanted a little bit more about Cress and Thorne’s background. This, of course, is just me being curious and this isn’t a major issue. I loved this book, I just WANT MORE. Maybe a book filled with just Cress and Thorne travelling the world.
“Yeah, but broken isn’t the same as unfixable”
Winter
The final book in the series is based on Snow White and features Winter as the main POV character; although we actually get a lot more of Cinder’s POV chapters than anyone else.
So, a little bit about this final book: Winter has been loved for her kindness and her beauty on Lunar. Her people claim she is more beautiful than Queen Levana herself. The Queen, who is ever so obsessed with being the most beautiful person herself, hated that Winter had that reputation so, she mutilated her step-daughter’s face because of it.
Winter herself, however, is a little bit crazy, she sees hallucinations and talks strangely; that is the side effects of not using her Lunar mind control abilities, she refuses to control another person and accepts the risk of going completely crazy because of it. However, despite that, her guard, Jacin, still loves her, her scars, and even her imaginary pet dog. While Winter and Jacin are trapped in a forbidden romance situation, she still dreams of being with him in the future, but all her dreams are cut short with Queen Levana orders Jacin to kill Winter. She doesn’t want any possible threat to her throne to arise and if that means killing her own step-daughter then so be it.
But, Jacin doesn’t kill her. Instead, he stages her death and helps her and Scarlet escape. He’s a very protective character, especially when it comes to Winter and her mental instability. He’s that bad guy to Cinder’s team but good guy to Winter; meaning his priority is to keep Winter safe (from herself and from other people trying to hurt her). They eventually reunite with Cinder but things get very serious very quickly.
Cinder’s plan is to send Kai back to New Beijing and get him to convince Queen Levana to hold the wedding on Lunar rather than on Earth. She agrees and so the large majority of the novel takes place on the Moon – which is pretty cool when you think about it. But, so many things happen. People go missing, some get kidnapped, some get reunited, some lose their fingers, get shot, almost drown, get eaten. A LOT happens and it will honestly take too much time to talk about every single event, so the short story is that Cinder and her team work together to convince the people of Lunar to rise up and rebel against Levana and her regime.
They defeated her in the end of course, but that final battle with Levana was brutal (I mean that she used her mind control abilities on Scarlet and Thorne and used them as a vessel to try and kill Cinder. WHICH WAS HARSH). But yeah, it was inevitable that all the characters get a happy ending, I mean, their story arcs are based on different fairytales and we all know that fairytales have happy endings (the Disney versions anyway). But the ending broke my heart.
The ending was happy don’t get me wrong, what made me sad was the fact that the group was separated and went their separate ways. Wolf and Scarlet went back to France and lived on Scarlet’s grandma’s farm. Cress and Thorne confessed to each other and traveled around the world on his spaceship. Iko stayed with Cinder and it looks like for now she will be separated from Kai. Since the rebellion was successful, Cinder is the Lunar Queen and Kai is an Emperor back on Earth so with the weight of their people on their shoulders, it was obvious that they would have to leave each other in the end.
BUT the good news is that in the end Cinder and Kai did have a conversation and Cinder is actually considered turning the Lunar government system from a monarchy to a democracy. From the very beginning it was clear that Cinder never wanted to be Queen (or a royal of any sort), she almost didn’t go to the royal ball back in the first novel because of it. So, it actually makes sense that she would want to try and create a system of democracy. And considering the people of Lunar have been under the control of a tyrant for so long, I would assume they would like a democracy as well. However, that gives me hope for Cinder and Kai’s relationship because if Cinder isn’t planning on being Queen that would mean she would return to New Beijing sometime in the future. Also, although Kai knows she doesn’t want to be Queen, he asked her if she would ever consider being an Empress (BECAUSE KAI IS AN EMPEROR SO HE BASICALLY JUST ASKED FOR CINDER TO MARRY HIM!!!!). And Cinder said that yes, she would consider being an Empress one day. (What’s the difference between being an empress and a queen?)
So, it’s clear they end up together in the end. You cannot convince me otherwise.
Still, even though they all have a happy and satisfying ending, I want them to stay on the Rampion and travel and go on adventures together. I WANT MORE ADVENTURES.
Back to Jacin and Winter, who are the sweetest and gentlest couple in the series, in my opinion. While Winter is a Luna Lovegood kind of character, the forbidden romance between the two added that spice and drama that I love seeing relationships. Also, the fact that they have a lot of history with each other – childhood sweethearts – make their relationship so much more pure and stronger than the others. However, it does concern me a little bit about how their relationship is pretty parental because Jacin does spend a lot of time taking care of Winter. But their ending is that they stay on Lunar but they stay together as they always have except now they can live peacefully without Levana. Which is arguably boring, they’re basically a couple in a domestic situation, but when you consider the fact that they both have been tortured by Levana in different ways, it’s understandable that they want a quiet life together. And I’m happy for them.
Now before I talk about my final opinion on the series, I wanted to talk a little bit about the author. Marissa Meyer (I honestly thought that she was related to Stephanie Meyer, but they’re not… I think) started out writing fanfiction – most notable she wrote Sailor Moon fanfiction under the pen name Alicia Blade. Which I think is great! Fanfiction writers are real writers and I love seeing fanfiction authors succeed into fully fledged authors with published work. She eventually got a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Children’s Literature and then got a Masters degree in Publishing. After she graduated she worked as an editor, and then as a freelance typesetter and proofreader. And then finally she became a full-time author and Cinder was actually her debut novel – AND WOW IT WAS A BRILLIANT DEBUT NOVEL.
So, my final opinion on this series is that it was amazing and one of the best series I’ve read in a long while. Of course, I loved the politics in this book the most. There is a lot of political intrigue throughout the series but this final book has the most political and if you’ve read my other book reviews you’ll know that I’m a sucker for a good political fantasy.
The relationships in the series are well developed (except for Scarlet and Wolf) and the characters individually are pretty developed as well. The last book in the series had a lot of character development in my opinion (and the last novel is also the longest novel in the series). None of the characters are idle (except for maybe Wolf but he’s been tortured so he gets a pass on this) and something is always happening. The plot and storyline line was very entertaining and interesting to read too, so I feel like there is a good balance between the characters and plot (i.e it is not a character-driven book because it would mean that the plot suffers or vice versa).
The world-building is fabulous as well, the universe is very detailed and we get to learn a lot about it. The thing i liked the most about the world building was that as a reader we were introduced to the universe bit by bit and at a good pace, the author didn’t just info dump us. So, she gets points for building up this universe very well (except for the fact that we’re not given a lot of details and history about Lunar, I would have loved to know more about them i.e how they established a civilisation up there in the first place). Speaking about pacing, I personally thought the pacing in the books were fine. A lot of things happen in these books and nothing felt rushed except for Scarlet’s relationship with Wolf.
My favourite thing in this series would have to be the relationships between the group. I’m not talking about the romantic relationship between the couple but I mean the friendships they all have with each other. Throughout the novels, each of the characters get separated from each other and so we get to see different people stuck together at different times. For example, when Kai was sent back to New Beijing Thorne was the one going back with him and their banter and relationship was adorable. Also, there was no girl-on-girl bashing! We got to see some great bonds with the girls as well which I loved because let’s face it a lot of books pit women against each other, so it was great seeing happy and healthy female friendships. Also, Iko. I can’t get over how sweet everyone is with Iko, Thorne flirts with her, Cinder loves her like a sister, and Iko swooning over Kai is so cute. Honestly, if you’re not into the politics, then at least give this series a go for the friendships and the found family asepct of the novel.
Finally, I just generally love the themes in this series. There was a clear class war between the rich and poor, privileged vs the unprivileged – although we don’t see a lot of this, the first novel has a lot of this implied. There was some discussion over the morality of controlling other people and the freedom of speech (Levana killed people who defied her). And most importantly, there was some discussion about equality, cyborgs were looked down upon because they have prosthetic limbs, this can be interpreted as being ableist in our society.
And lastly, while this wasn’t a clear theme in the novels, can I just say how much I like the diversity. Cinder and Kai (full name Kaito) were Asian, Scarlet was European, Thorne was American and Wolf and Cress are Lunar, but Cress is sometimes portrayed by fan artists as an African/POC woman.
And that is the end of my review. Overall, this was a great series and after being in a reading slump for so long it was great being so obsessed with a series. Now, I like to think that I have a good balance of long blog posts and short blog posts, on a Word Document this is around 9 pages long, so if you read this whole review, THANK YOU for sticking with me while I lowkey fangirl over these characters. I think I’m going to make ‘Let’s Talk About…’ a blog post series now because obviously, I like doing these kinds of long book reviews/ discussions a lot. Anyway, let me know what you think about this blog post, and as usual, I hope you all have a lovely day.
Note: this was originally published on March 10, 2020.
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