Winter: I know this is a Snow White retelling, so where are the seven dwarfs? (My thoughts on book #4 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Before I start talking about my thoughts on Winter, I just wanted to say that since Winter is the last book in the Lunar Chronicles series, I’ll be discussing my thoughts on both the book Winter; as well as my thoughts on the series as a whole; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

Right off the bat, I have to say that as much as I’ve loved The Lunar Chronicles, Winter is definitely my least favorite book in the main series. However, if you’re somebody that prefers to lump Fairest: Levana’s Story in with the main Lunar Chronicles series (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress and Winter) when it comes to how you would rank each of the books from your favorite book in the series to your least favorite book in the series, Winter would be my second least favorite book in the series. While there are quite a few things that I loved about this book, there are also a lot of things about Winter that really frustrated the hell out of me at times.

For starters, the character Winter definitely ended up being my second least favorite character in the series, behind Queen Levana. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t outright hate the character Winter, but she really annoyed me quite a bit throughout the book, and for the most part I just couldn’t get invested in the relationship between Winter and Jacin, which is something I’ll discuss in more detail later on in this review. When it comes to fictional characters that are written as being mentally unstable, I’m definitely able to enjoy that kind of character if they’re written in a way that’s genuinely compelling and interesting if the writer is approaching it from a more serious angle. I can also enjoy characters that are written as being mentally unstable if it’s done more for the purposes of being entertaining and possibly somewhat comedic or campy like soap operas will do sometimes. Kimberly Shaw from Melrose Place is a character that comes to mind when it comes to writing characters that are supposed to be mentally unstable this way.

While Winter isn’t an altogether terrible character, she definitely annoyed me quite a bit throughout the book, which is a shame, because I think that there are aspects of the character that were pretty interesting and could have made her a very compelling character if the writing for Winter had been handled differently. Unfortunately, the way the character was written made the parts of the book featuring her rather grating and eye roll inducing in my opinion.

That being said, it’s honestly kind of hard for me to tell what exactly Marissa Meyer was going for when it comes to the character Winter, and the way she’s written. In some ways, Winter’s reluctance to use her lunar gift, and the way she struggles with controlling the hallucinations that she has throughout the book, because she refuses to use it reminded me a lot of Elsa from Frozen; and how she didn’t know how she could control her powers until the end of the movie. The difference, however, is that I actually like Elsa, whereas Winter just constantly annoyed me throughout the book. For the most part, the parts of the book that featured Winter were honestly some of my absolute least favorite parts of the book.

The Lunar Chronicles: Brace yourselves, Everybody! It’s time to explore the mind and past of Queen Levana (My thoughts on Fairest: Levana’s Story by Marissa Meyer)

Right off the bat, I have to say that while I’ve absolutely loved the Lunar Chronicles so far, Fairest: Levana’s Story is definitely my least favorite book in the series. For the record, I still have to read Winter, so that opinion may change. As I said in my review for Cress, I was really hoping that this book would give Levana some depth and complexity, both as a villain and as a character in general. To be fair, I do think that this book gave Levana some complexity and depth, but unfortunately it didn’t give her too much of those things, which as a result, greatly hindered my enjoyment of Fairest.

The biggest problem that I have with Fairest is the fact that right from the beginning of the book, Levana comes across as being so self-centered, unlikable and evil that it was extremely hard for me to get emotionally invested in Levana as a character and care about her, or get invested in what was happening throughout the book. While the Lunar Chronicles series as a whole has made me think about the TV show Once Upon a Time a lot, as well as the show Grimm, since they’re both shows that involve reimagining fairy tales; Fairest reminded me a lot of the season one episode of Once Upon a Time, “The Stable Boy” where the backstory behind Regina’s hatred for Snow White was revealed. I pretty much had the same problems with this book as I did with that episode of Once Upon a Time. The reveal of what happened to make Regina hate Snow White so much ended up being incredibly disappointing, and it was honestly rather difficult to go along with the idea that Regina was justified in blaming Snow White for the death of Daniel, who was the man that she loved and wanted to marry when it was her mother, Cora, who had actually killed Daniel. While I wasn’t crazy about the explanation as to why Regina hated Snow White so much and wanted to get revenge on her, I was still able to have at least some sympathy for Regina. Plus, I thought that Regina had plenty of depth to her at that point in the series. Levana, on the other hand, lacks depth and is constantly acting so coldhearted, self-centered and flat-out evil throughout the book, that the reader is never really given a chance to feel all that sorry for Levana or truly like her.

I get that Levana’s sister, Channary, was physically and emotionally abusive towards her and is responsible for the scars that she has on her face, but that doesn’t automatically mean that the reader is going to feel sympathetic towards Levana; because the things that Levana does in this book that don’t involve Channary in any way are pretty horrible. I can’t help but wonder if Meyer was trying to portray Levana as a sympathetic villain in this book. However, the thing I think people need to remember is that there’s a big difference between a character having a sympathetic backstory and actually being a sympathetic character.