Book Review – Cress

Title: Cress [The Lunar Chronicles 3]

Author: Marissa Meyer

Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fairytale Retelling

Length: 550

Rating: 5 Star

Series Review: Novelas, 1, 2, 3, 4

Description/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.

Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

And we are back to five stars! Such a great book. I am sorry people who haven’t read this book yet, this review will not be for you. It will be filled with scary spoilers throughout.

As you might have already guessed or read this book is about Cress or Crescent Moon, the girl with the crazy hair we met in the first book urging Cinder to go to the ball and warn Kai about the Lunar queen’s plan. I am a bit ashamed of how long it took me to work out that she was Dr. Erland’s daughter. I didn’t work it out until we had already spent quite a lot of time with Cress and then switched over to Erland and he started talking about his daughter that it clicked. I was panicking so hard that she would run off and never find out about him. Thank god that didn’t happen, but of course she finds out just as he is dying. Bit sad.

Her relationship with Thorne however was just adorable. Cinder and Kair have a more adult and serious relationship, but Thorne’s and Cress’ is more sweet and easy going. Even thought I was freaking out that Thorne went blind because nothing is ever allowed to happen to him, I think it really made their relationship what it was. She had to help him and he had to kind of help her with life despite the fact he cannot see. At one point Cress gets kidnapped and taken to Erland’s lab place before everyone works out they are all friends, and Thorne with the help of the escort-droid that he got for Iko so that she could have a pretty human body (which was just adorable), he charges in their blind to save her.

Cinder comes along just a little bit later and runs into the droid which result in this:

He’s just gone inside to be heroic. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know you’re here.

I love the writing style. It always takes a moment to be funny. Another moment I loved was:

What happened? Why is the ship screaming?

Another new character we met was Jacin. I don’t know how I feel about him. We think he is on our side for awhile but it turns out that he is actually wanting to help the queen’s daughter Winter and NOT Cinder so we don’t know how much we can trust him. I did think it was pretty amusing though when he finally works out who Cinder is though and why she was so confused about who he was loyal too. He just gives a sly smile and lets it go. I look forward to finding out what happens with him.

I thought wolf was the biggest idiot in this book and I kept wanting him to leave. He was pretty much useless the entire time because Scarlet gets captured by Lunar again. Something that was really all his fault. Cinder told him to stay because it was more dangerous for him to come but what does he do? He follows her anyway and of course everything goes wrong just like Cinder knew they would. Then he goes and tries to kill Cinder, twice, because Scarlet is gone. Gah. He just annoyed me so so much. We didn’t get much of Scarlet in this book because of the kidnapping, but part of me was glad. The torture she was going through and having to chop off her own finger. I felt so bad for her. I did like the interactions with the crazy princess Winter though and I am so excited for her book. I love me some crazy characters.

“You shouldn’t call me crazy. They don’t like that.”

“But you are crazy.”

“I know. Do you know how I know? Because the palace walls have been bleeding for years, and no one else sees it.”

I was so excited about the Kai kidnapping. It had to happen and I so desperately was Kai and Cinder action. The kidnapping was really funny, I loved how Cinder just shot Kai with a tranq dart. Then when he is on the ship and Iko screams for Kai not to look at her because Wolf wrecked her new body and she isn’t pretty and is embarrassed. The awkward interaction between Kai and Cinder when she is telling him who she is, after all the yelling of course, then the wonderful Cinder breakdown and their kiss. YAAAAYYYYY! I am so excited to get more of their relationship in the next book.

Just encase you didn’t figure it out already, I really really enjoyed this book. Even though I didn’t think the Rapunzel theme showed through enough and Cress lost her long hair too quickly. This book is an easy solid 5 star winner and I think everyone should read this series.

 

Till Next Time…

Book Review – Scarlet

Title: Scarlet [The Lunar Chronicles 2]

Author: Marissa Meyer

Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fairytale Retelling

Length: 452

Rating: 4 Star

Series Review: Novelas, 1, 2, 3, 4

Description/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.

Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

After the last one, this one let me down a bit but I still thought it was an amazing story.

I think the only reason why this one fell a start from the first for me was that we were introduced to some new people, two of which are Scarlet and Wolf, and they are telling us the story of little red riding hood (but not really that much). While I liked these two new characters, compared to Cinder and Kai I didn’t really care about them at all. Pretty much the entire time I was reading about them I was thinking to myself how they were going to connect up with Cinder and the rest of her crew, I wasn’t really concerned much with their story.

Sadly, we don’t get any Cinder an Kai time because CInder starts off in jail and must break out and Kai is off doing Emperor like things elsewhere. This made me very very sad. This was kind of made up for however in the new non-romantic partner is crime (because they are off being criminal together) Thorne. Thorne is the accidental person Cinder picked up along the way while breaking out of prison who happens to have a ship. Their relationship is just amazing. It starts off with Cinder being really annoyed by him but by the end you know they love each other. Iko also ends up being the ship and this was just so funny. She made a pretty damn awesome ship. My favourite moments in this book involve Thorne and Cinder and sometimes Iko. There is a part where ‘captain’ Thorne was trying to fly ships, something he apparently doesn’t do well, and Cinder is just there saying “We are going to die.” Then Thorne comes up with lines like “We’re having another moment aren’t we?” when Cinder only kind of wants to hurt him. So funny.

If you don’t want spoilers, you should probably leave here for the rest of this review will be going into detail about events in the book.

I loved the scene were Cinder and Thorne find the very creepy basement at Scarlet’s house where her grandmother had helped Cinder’s adoptive father build her and piece her all back together after she was nearly burnt to death. A process that took eight years! Wow. Yes, that would explain why Cinder has no memory before the age of eleven. She was submerged in goo. I also thought it was really interesting that that was why she has the google thing inside her head, because she had no idea of the world and this would allow her to find things out without people really noticing that she had no idea what anything was or how things go.

I was so ashamed of myself when it came to the whole Scarlet and Wolf side of the story. So many hints were dropped that Wolf wasn’t from Earth but was in fact a Lunar but I didn’t make the connects at all until he ‘turned’ on Scarlet and lead her into his pack’s ‘den.’ Not that he could turn crazy and rip a person to bits with just his hands, not the fact he had wolf teeth, not when Scarlet’s father was saying that the people who had him captured forced him to hurt himself, and not when he didn’t know what a tomato or a carrot was. Nope. Not even a thought about it. So shameful.

At the same time though when Scarlet gets captured and Wolf is secretly trying to help her, I got really happy because I just knew that Cinder was going to fly in with Thorne and save the day. I tell you, that saving scene was so action packed. I thought it was pretty funny that Cinder shot Wolf with tranq dart because she thought he was going to eat Scarlet. Part of me was screaming at them to leave him there because it was such a hassle to save everyone with this giant guy all knocked out and useless.

Cinder was so much more kick confident in this book I feel. She went about everything with a determination that she didn’t completely have in the last book. I was actually really worried that this would make her go a bit evil with her Lunar powers, so I pray that doesn’t happen by the end of the series. I think maybe perhaps she will build new chips to make is to the Lunar’s don’t have to use their powers without side effects and so humans can be protected. I think the part the showed her toughness the best besides breaking out of jail and saving everyone, would be at the end Scarlet is yelling at her. Why hasn’t she done something sooner to save everyone/fix everything since she is the lost Lunar princess? Cinder just turns around and is basically like, well for your information Scarlet I only found out three days ago and since then I have broken out of prison, fixed a ship and come and saved you. Haven’t had the time to overthrow an evil queen just yet. Scarlet is just standing there going oh… ok then. Hahaha so good.

ANYWAY that is enough rambling from me. I liked this one but there were a few things I didn’t like as much as the first but I still loved it and I am picking up the next book in the series right this second. Tell me your thoughts on everything that happened in the book. Did you pick up on the Wolf thing quicker or am I the only that was blind?

 

Till Next Time…