The Lunar Chronicles – A Review
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The Lunar Chronicles are a series of 6 books written by Marissa Meyer. The books take place in the distant future (100+ years after the 4th world war). The 4 main books in the series: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter are retellings of the traditional fairy tales Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White. The other two books in the series are slightly different. Fairest is the back story of Queen Levana – you can think of it like the movie Maleficent. And the last book, Stars Above, is a collection of short stories which expand our knowledge of the characters in The Lunar Chronicles.
I originally started this series while I was waiting for The Raven King, the last book in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle to be released. I knew a lot of people in my Tumblr feed seemed to enjoy Meyer’s series, so I thought it might be a worthwhile use of my reading time while I waited. And it was. The Lunar Chronicles was such an interesting series, I wanted to talk a little more about this series as a whole than I would normally write in my Book It posts.
Cinder
A Synopsis
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, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future. (Goodreads)
My Thoughts
Even in the Future the Story Begins with Once Upon a Time.
And don’t the best stories begin with “once upon a time”? Meyer’s writing style made it easy to fall in love with Linh Cinder, cyborg, mechanic, (and Lunar princess?). The book was an interesting read, which I managed to finish in a day.
There were a few plot points that felt obvious, but I think it had more to do with the fact that it was a retelling of the classic fairytale Cinderella, than due to Meyer’s writing abilities. After all, I would never have thought of Cinderella as a story you could tell using a cyborg.
Of all of the characters in the series, Cinder is the one I connect with most. Not that I’m a cyborg, or treated as a 2nd-class citizen- but I am a little “different”. My mother calls me the “creative” one, and while most people I am around are wonderful, I do occasionally see looks of confusion when I talk about the things I’m interested in. In the end, I think everyone has moments like that. Where they feel like they don’t fit in. I think that’s why Cinder is so easy to connect with.