Lunar Chronicles: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Winter, Stars Above

A friend of mine has been reading the Lunar Chronicles so I decided to post my reviews for that series today. Overall I found it to be a lot of fun and Marissa Meyer has become one of my favorite YA authors.


Cinder by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Content: Clean


Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder is the second fairytale re-imagining with a futuristic/sci-fi twist that I've read this year and really loved, the other being A Long, Long Sleep. I ended up loving both of them.

I've never been a huge fan of the Disney version of Cinderella, and this version of Cinderella pretty much turns the Disney version on its head. Cinder is in many ways, the anti-Cinderella. She doesn’t wait around for other people to rescue her. She is smart and industrious, and she was such a fun and interesting character. The fact that she was a cyborg made the story so much more interesting.

My favorite scene is when she is driving to the ball. Some people might consider the following minor spoilers, so even though I don't I'm giving a warning anyway:

I just loved that she drives the old beat up car with the busted headlights, cracked windshield, and missing back window to the ball. I also love that the car is orange like a pumpkin. She crashes the car into a tree right as she gets to the palace, steps out into the pouring rain and says hello to the greeter at the door in her wet hair, and stained and wrinkled dress. I loved how everyone at the ball stares at her not because she is beautiful, but because she looks like such a mess. And the part where she leaves not just her shoe behind but her foot as well is great.

This is a very inventive story and I’m looking forward to reading the sequels.




Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Content: Clean


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. 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. 

Scarlet is a great follow up to Cinder. I liked the way the wolves were woven into the story. Not sure exactly why they are needed if the Lunars have mind control, but lets not over analyze it.

Scarlet is a great heroine and I loved her backstory with her grandmother. I loved her grandmother's story as well and the way it was intertwined with Cinder's. Wolf was also easy to like and I felt really bad for him and the things that he went through.

I'm still loving this series and will continue on to the next book.




Cress by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Content: Clean


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.

So far none of the books in this series have disappointed. I loved Cress and I loved the way Rapunzel gets a makeover with ratty, tangled hair. Cress's naivety was charming, and I loved her interactions with Captain Thorne. Who by the way, with his smiling, winking, flirting with anything that walks, self-assured arrogance reminds me a lot of Captain Jack from Doctor Who.

There were a lot of important developments to the plot of the series in this book. I was very pleased at where it ended and that Kai and Cinder are reunited. Oh and Iko gets something really cool. I just loved Iko in this book.

I will definitely be reading the last book in the series when it's released.




Winter by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dystopia
Content: Clean


Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mark her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won't approve of her feelings for her childhood friend--the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn't as weak as Levana believes her to be and she's been undermining her stepmother's wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that's been raging for far too long.

Winter is the fourth and final book in the Lunar Chronicles series. Just like the other books in the series it is based on a fairy tale. In this case the fairy tale is Snow White. And yet again I really enjoyed the way the author incorporated the fairy tale into the futurist sci-fi type story. Over-all this was an excellent ending to the series. By this point there are a lot of characters to keep up with, but the author pulled this off amazingly well with plenty of time spent on each of them.

This is one of the only YA series that I can say never got old. Each book is a good read and the quality of the series never fades. Another reviewer said that this series is like anime in book form, and I like that description. It didn't surprise me at all when I found out that Marissa Meyer had once written Sailor Moon fan fiction.

I think the only drawbacks to this book was that the end battle dragged out a little long for me, and there could have been more thought put into strategy and planning before they all headed into battle. I wasn't quite satisfied with the way the book ended either as it left a couple of things unresolved. The best thing about this book was the theme of loving and accepting ourselves and others the way they are. I also think that it's great that Marissa Meyer doesn't shy away from letting some horrible things happen to her characters.




Stars Above by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-fi
Content: Clean


Stars Above is a collection of novellas set in the Lunar Chronicles universe. It features the characters from the series and expands on their stories. I had already read Glitches and The Queen's Army, but not any of the other stories. I think they were all very good and in my opinion essential reading for anyone who has read The Lunar Chronicles. Anyone who doesn't read this will miss out on the back stories of all the important characters from the books and a very important wedding. I do wish that the last story could have been integrated into Winter. It would have made a much better ending for the book than the one we got. I also wish that I had been able to read the novella The Princess and the Guard before I read Winter because it helped me to know those characters better and get a real sense of the bond they shared, which I felt was kind of missing in Winter.



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Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism
Content: Clean


Leah Westfall has a gift; she can sense gold. She has kept this gift a secret her whole life from everyone but her parents, but after tragedy strikes, Lee discovers someone else does know and she ends up running away to join the California Gold Rush to avoid him. This is the beginning of an adventure for Lee that includes lots of hardship and tragedy, but also earns her new friends as well, as she makes the trek all the way from Georgia to California.

Walk on Earth A Stranger was a very fast read for me. Considering the fact that it is mostly historical fiction with just a small amount of fantasy thrown in, I honestly wasn't expecting to be so glued to it. The best thing about this book is Lee. She's a girl who is tough because she's had to be. As one of my buddy reads friends said, she reminded her of the girl in True Grit.

I liked that the good things balanced out the bad things that happened in the book. There would be a scene where the worst in humanity is portrayed, but then it would be followed up by one full of generosity and hope. Quite a few of the characters in the book really evolved on the journey. One in particular who was hard to like in the beginning, becomes very likable in the end.

There is a hint of romance in the book and I liked that it is a very slow burning one that didn't interfere with the plot. Jefferson is Lee's best friend and that is how the relationship is mostly portrayed throughout the book.

If there is one thing I'm disappointed about, it would be that the whole book is spent traveling. Don't get me wrong though, this traveling is not boring. It's filled with adventure and tragedy. I was just eager to see what would happen when they finally got to California.[ I was really disappointed that her uncle finds her immediately after she arrives in California. I thought it was a little far-fetched that he would find her so easily. But I loved the way her new found "family" stood up for her.  (hide spoiler)]

I will most certainly be reading the next book in the series.



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Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery



In 2003, sixteen-year-old Rebecca Winter disappeared.

Eleven years later she is replaced.

Bec Winters went missing eleven years ago. In present day a young woman has just been caught shoplifting food and knowing she has to find a way out of going to jail, she decides to tell the police that she is the missing Bec Winters, whom she looks a lot like, and that she has just escaped from the place she has been held all these years.

If that sounds hard to pull off, then you are not alone in thinking so. I kind of thought the premise of the book was a bit far-fetched, but then a person can change a lot in eleven years, especially from a teen to an adult. The impersonator here has quite a few close calls as she dodges police questions and DNA and blood tests to keep her secret. Despite it seeming unlikely that she would get away with this impersonation, I still very much enjoyed Only Daughter.

I really did not find the impersonator very likable (it's kind of hard to like someone who pretends to be someone's long lost daughter) or Bec for that matter, but in the end they both grew on me. The impersonator because of how she changes as a person and Bec because what happens to her makes her more sympathetic in the end.

The book switches back and forth between the impersonator's (I don't think we are ever told her name, at least I don't remember it) point of view in the present and Bec's point of view in the past. The mystery is very slow to unfold and, to me that is one of the books weaknesses. It drags a bit at times because of this. Not much is revealed until nearly the end. There were clues, but it was hard to put them together and make sense out of them. There were also a few people who acted suspicious but then completely normal at the same time, and there were a couple of people that seemed like obvious predators.

I chose to read this because I was in the mood for a good mystery. I feel like it lived up to that expectation because it kept me guessing all the way through. I really would have liked more closure at the end with a couple of people, but this was still a good read and I sped through it despite the things I didn't like or found far-fetched. I recommend giving it a try.



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The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Implied sex




In Renthia everything has a spirit and the spirits keep the world alive. But these are not kind, gentle spirits, these are blood thirsty spirits that hate humans. Each Kingdom in Renthia has a queen. The spirits are compelled to choose the queens so that they do not tear apart the world that they keep alive. The chosen queens are gifted with power from the spirits and are able to control the spirits, and at the same time keep the humans safe. Any young girl with the gift to call and control the spirits can be tested to see if she can become an heir. One of the heirs is chosen by the spirits to replace the queen when she dies. At the beginning of the book something goes terribly wrong and a whole village that should have been protected by the queen is destroyed. That village is Daleina's village and this is the story of her journey to become an heir.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Queen of Blood. In some ways it reminded me of reading Juliet Marillier's Shadowfell series and Naomi Novik's Uprooted. I was really drawn by the cover. I think it's just beautiful and it helped me visualize what the world in the book looked like. I loved the villages in the trees and the idea of travel on zip lines. How fun would that be?

Another thing I really liked is that the main character, Daleina is not the best at everything. She struggles to control the spirits for quite a while and it never comes natural to her the way it does to most of the other students. But Daleina is clever where some of the others are not and this serves her well. Although I really liked her, near the end Daleina did begin to annoy me a little with her guilt and her worry over a couple of things.[ Worrying and feeling guilty over her sister when she found out she had broken her leg was excessive and stupid. People break theirs legs sometimes, it happens. Why would she think she should be there to save her sister from every accident and injury? And the guilt over the choice she made to help assassinate the queen was understandable to a point, but the queen had taken the lives of a lot of innocent people and bargained with the spirits, who were the enemy, so I had no sympathy for her myself. I pretty much despised her from the get go. It was no surprise to me that she had a hand in the things that were happening.  (hide spoiler)]

I also liked Ven somewhat, but I felt like he was a naive idiot about the woman he loved[ Queen Fara and I didn't see what he saw in her, especially after what she did to him in the beginning. I was disappointed that he would pick up his relationship with her again. Ven is one of those men who is blinded by the physical beauty a woman so much that he doesn't see that her heart is not what it should be  (hide spoiler)]. In the beginning I was expecting Daleina and Ven to end up being love interests, it wasn't apparent how much older he was than her, later on though it seemed obvious that he was substantially older. The romance that does develop between Daleina and someone else is ok. I liked that the focus of the story wasn't on romance, but this romance was a bit underwhelming for me. Maybe even close to being insta-love. While the characters interacted with each other for a while (I'm not really sure how long it was, so it could have been a month or more. If it was said in the book I don't remember.), much of their interactions were just touched on or in the vein of him taking care of her so it felt underdeveloped to me.

Another thing about the book that I really liked was the friendship between the girls at the academy and the way they were portrayed. The one girl, Merecot who we could have been set up to hate ended up being more than that. I still want to know a lot more about her, what was driving her and how she ended up where she does in the end[ becoming the queen of the neighboring land so quickly. Is she going to be a threat to Aratay as Queen Fara feared?  (hide spoiler)]. For a while there I wondered what the purpose of her character was.

I liked that Daleina's family was so supportive of her and that they shared in her hopes and dreams, even though it meant she wasn't there most of the time. They believed in her and in turn that enabled her to believe in herself. So many books are about broken families or families that have lost a parent and it was refreshing that that wasn't the case here. That being said, there is a lot of heartache and bloodshed in this book, but the bloodshed is mostly touched on without a lot of detail which makes it appropriate for YA readers even though this is marketed for adults.

This book also spans a number of years and at times I felt like things were skipped over a little too much. I doubt there will be significant jumps in time in subsequent books in the series, as this one served as an introduction to the world, and as a background for the characters and their motivations. Basically how they get from point A to point B. I am looking forward to reading what happens next.



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Spoiler Tags

I am transferring these reviews from my Goodreads account and just wanted to mention that on Goodreads my reviews have spoiler tags that you can click on and view comments I hide that contain spoilers. Unfortunately I have not found a way to hide the spoilers here so I've just completely eliminated them on this blog.

The Mistborn Series: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages

Since I've added my recent review of The Alloy of Law here I decided that I should include my reviews on the original Mistborn trilogy as well. My thoughts on the first book were very brief even though it was my favorite book in that trilogy but I really hadn't started writing reviews at that point. Maybe at some point I will revise it.




Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Clean


What if the hero of prophecy fails? What kind of world results when the Dark Lord is in charge?

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the “Sliver of Infinity,” reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler’s most hellish prison. Kelsier “snapped” and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Mistborn is an excellent fantasy with a well thought out, unique magic system, and characters you really come to care for. I can't wait to read the next one.






The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Clean


I liked The Well of Ascension, but not as much as Mistborn. It seemed to drag at the end and Vin just drove me crazy with her stupidity through much of it. Also there was a lack of romance between Vin and Elend. I mean, not that there weren't kissing scenes, there were. There was just no feeling in it. I usually don't care for the way men write romantic scenes. A lot of them tend to completely miss the mark with the emotions of it.
I do continue to enjoy the magic system in this series. Although I have to wonder if you would really be able to see coins that were moving fast enough to go through your body. So there are some flaws in it, but I will not pick it apart any more than that.

I liked that we got to see deeper into a few of the supporting characters this time around especially Breeze and Sazed. And the scene with Sazed all bulked up like the Hulk had me giggling, even though I probably wasn't supposed to find it humorous. I kept thinking of Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk and that line where he says, "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

The end was a little predictable with what happens to Elend, and I was hoping the whole time that who I thought was the spy wouldn't be the spy because I liked him so much, but of course he was.

I will probably get around to reading the last book in the trilogy eventually, but for now I need a break from this world.




The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Clean

I'm going to be one of those people with an unpopular opinion here. When I started the Mistborn Trilogy I loved the first book enough to give it 5 stars. The second book was a little disappointing to me as I found Vin rather annoying, but I gave it 4 stars because Sazed, Spook, and other characters were all great. And now this last book, The hero of Ages has mostly just been boring to me. I really think the book could have been edited down to a lot less pages, and that is also a problem I have with the other two books in the series, but I enjoyed the story told in those despite that. This time around I mostly didn't. There was too much talk and the relationships between the characters felt distant to me. [ I kind of felt the way Vin did when she saw Elend die. She was ok about it because she had let him go a long time ago. It really showed in the book. I too had let Elend and also Vin go a long time ago.  (hide spoiler)] Elend and Vin just no longer interested me as characters as they had become boring. The same cannot be said for Sazed or Spook though. I still really liked those two despite the fact that Sazed was depressed and not really himself through most of this book. [ I liked the way things ended up with Sazed though.  (hide spoiler)]

Although I didn't like this book as much as the other two I am glad that I read it and finished the trilogy, I think. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. I liked it but I didn't. I mainly wanted to finish this trilogy because I think the second trilogy in the series looks more up my alley and I really want to read it.



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The Alloy of Law

I finally moved on to the second Mistborn trilogy and was the first book ever fun!

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content: Clean


Taking place centuries after the first Mistborn trilogy, The Alloy of Law is set in a time period similar to the old west with guns and trains. I'm not a fan of straight up westerns, but add in a fantasy twist and it works for me, just like Firefly worked for me as a space opera western. I used to watch the TV show The Wild Wild West, well I watched the reruns anyway, and in some ways this book reminded me of that show. It was just a whole lot of fun with the right amount of humor thrown in. Wax and Wayne were great as buddies. I loved that they always had each other's backs, and I liked them almost as much as the great Riyria duo Royce and Hadrian.

Wax is a refreshingly older character in his 40s who has been a lawman out in the Roughs. After a tragic death that he blames himself for, he decides that part of his life is over, and when some robberies and kidnappings start taking place he repeatedly tells himself he is not going to get involved. Wax has reluctantly come home to the city to finally take over his family estate after the death of his uncle but the estate is left almost penniless so Wax decides to marry into a family with money.

In comes Steris, who has plenty of money but needs social standing so she agrees to marry Wax and produces a contract that is absolutely ridiculous and funny at the same time. Hopefully Steris will learn to relax as she is incredibly uptight. There isn't a lot of her in this book, but enough that I'm interested in reading more about her in later installments.

Then there is her "cousin" Marasi. I loved Marasi. She is smart, resourceful, and is an excellent shot with a rifle. She honestly would be the perfect match for Wax, I'm kind of shipping these two at this point even though Wax intends to marry Steris. I can't wait to see what develops with these relationships in the next two books.

Wayne is laugh out loud funny at times. He worked out in the Roughs with Wax. He is a master of disguise and he can imitate any accent. He also has this funny habit of "trading" things. Instead of outright stealing from people, he will take something and leave something else in its place, and I couldn't help but laugh at some of the trades. He also is obsessed with hats, one in particular in this book.

Sanderson has created a world and characters in this second era Mistborn trilogy that I like even better than the first. Although I loved The Final Empire, and loved a lot of things about The Well of Ascension, the first trilogy bored me at times and I felt some of the characters became a little stale, especially in the third book which I only rated 3 stars. This book is very different in tone, with the first trilogy being on the epic scale and feel, and this one being lighter and more fun. That makes it actually kind of hard to compare the two. Although I know a lot of people will disagree with me, I personally prefer Sanderson when he is lighter and more fun.

I enjoyed the references to the old characters from the first trilogy and I found the religions that have cropped up interesting. There were a couple of surprises thrown in this book that I didn't see coming. That was one of the best epilogues I've read in a while and it has left me really eager to read more.
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