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.

Cress: This sure isn’t your typical Rapunzel retelling (My thoughts on book #3 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Let me preface this review by saying that out of all the fairy tales that Marissa Meyer incorporated into The Lunar Chronicles, the story of Rapunzel is definitely the one that I know the least about. That being said, I feel like the fact that I wasn’t very familiar with the story of Rapunzel actually enhanced my enjoyment of Cress in a lot of ways. When I was reading Cinder and Scarlet, I found myself constantly thinking about the original stories of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood and was frequently wondering how Marissa Meyer might or might not incorporate and reimagine various elements from those stories into the series. However, when I was reading Cress, I just enjoyed it as its own unique story without ever really comparing and contrasting it to the story of Rapunzel.

Before I go any further, I’d like to just go right ahead and say that Cress is definitely my favorite book in the series so far. If you’ve read my review for Scarlet, you may remember that one of the things that I talked about in my review is that the book wasn’t quite what I was expecting when it comes to it serving as a follow-up to Cinder and a continuation of the series. Cress, however, was much more in line with what I had originally been expecting the books that followed Cinder to be like prior to actually reading Scarlet. One of my biggest criticisms about Scarlet is that I felt like Cinder was kind of hogging the spotlight throughout the book, and when that wasn’t the case, the book felt like too much of an ensemble piece for my taste. I really feel like Marissa Meyer should have focused at least a little more on Scarlet and Wolf in Scarlet than she did. While Cress is also very much an ensemble piece, I think Meyer did a much better job of putting most of the focus of the book on Cress, as well as Thorne since he’s Cress’ love interest in the series.

One of things that I have to give this book a lot of praise for is the fact that the story had really great pacing, in my opinion. There was a lot of action and different things happening throughout the book, but the story never felt like it was moving too slow or too fast. Plus, all of the storylines that were going on throughout the book were very interesting and engaging, so I never found myself getting bored, or having trouble paying attention to the story as I was listening to the audiobook version of Cress.

Crescent “Cress” Moon Darnel is definitely a very likable and interesting character. In a story that’s full of fantasy elements, she really felt like a real person and a well-rounded character, especially when it came to her feelings for Thorne. Given the fact that Cress had lived a rather sheltered life, being stuck in a satellite in space for pretty much her entire life, it made a lot of sense to me that she would have somewhat of a naïve view of the world and the stories that she had read about Thorne in the news. She believed that Thorne had had noble reasons for the various questionable things that he had done over the years, often breaking various laws in the process, when in reality Thorne’s motives for his actions had typically been rather self-serving.

Scarlet: This sure isn’t your typical Little Red Riding Hood retelling (My thoughts on book #2 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Now that I’ve finished reading and reviewing Emma Chase’s Legal Briefs series (Overruled, Sustained, Appealed), I’ve decided to read and review the rest of the Lunar Chronicles basically back-to-back-to-back. Admittedly, I originally thought about doing that when I read and reviewed Cinder back in January, but I ultimately decided to hold off on doing that since I wanted to do the same thing with the Legal Briefs series; that being said, here are my thoughts on Scarlet.

Right off the bat, I have to admit that while I loved Scarlet, this book ended up being very different from the way I was expecting it to be. I was really expecting the titular Scarlet Benoit to be featured in this book front and center with her being the protagonist of the book, and Wolf basically being the co-lead character of the book. However, this book ultimately ended up feeling like more of an ensemble piece than anything else. That definitely really took me by surprise as I was reading it.

While I’ve always thought that three of the most important tasks that the first book in a series is supposed to accomplish is to introduce the main characters, introduce the premise of the series, as well as establish the status quo for the series; I feel like this book did a much better job of establishing what I can expect from the Lunar Chronicles as a whole. Sure, Cinder did a great job of introducing the characters Cinder, Kai and Queen Levana, as well as various aspects of the series such as how the characters are dealing with the threat of the letumosis plague; but as I said, I was originally expecting each book in the series to focus primarily on a different character, with the characters from the previous books being featured in a rather reduced capacity. However, Scarlet really ended up coming across as an ensemble novel that focused on a variety of characters instead of focusing primarily on Scarlet, along with Wolf.