Let's Bust a Recap : The Lunar Chronicles

I finished this series shortly before Cody and I finished The Lord of the Rings, and let me tell you: between the two, I came away with a serious book hangover. I've watched a lot more TV recently than I normally do because it's been hard to jump into something else.

If you had told me a couple months ago that I'd love a book about cyborgs and androids and a war between the Earth and the moon, I'd have laughed in your face. But here we are.

My BFF Christina got to select our book club's book for June, and she chose Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I was aware that this was the first in a series called the Lunar Chronicles, but I was under the impression that because these were fairytale retellings, each book in the series could stand alone. So I checked Cinder out from the library thinking it would be a one-and-done for me and came home in my blissful ignorance. 

My BFF Christina failed to mention that I would need Scarlet near at hand immediately upon finishing Cinder. And so on and so forth with Cress and Winter, the other two books in this series. Ergo, I found myself in great distress on a Friday night as I came to the end of Cinder and the library was closed. And then was equally distressed when I was able to check out Scarlet and Winter the next day, but had to wait for Cress to come in from another library in the interstate system. Because what if it didn't come in time??

We survived, obviously, but what I'm saying is: this series is seriously unputdownable, and if you are contemplating starting it, have all of them ready to go, for the love. And don't y'all even try to let Christina off the hook for this. This was not her first rodeo with The Lunar Chronicles. She knew. 

The Lunar Chronicles is a Young Adult dystopian series by Marissa Meyer which, if I had to sum them up in a few words, are like fairytales meeting Star Wars. 

And I'm here for them in a big way.

Cinder is the first book in the series and was originally published in 2012. The loose fairytale retelling is of Cinderella, but in Cinder our protagonist is a teenage cyborg mechanic living in the Eastern Commonwealth in the Third Era. A plague has been wreaking havoc on the Earth, and the prince-turned-emperor is having to make some tough decisions about forming a marriage alliance with the evil lunar Queen Levana. 

I mean, does it sound laughable? Yes. 

Did I love it? Also Yes. 

The second book, Scarlet, was published in 2013, and roughly parallels the fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood. In it, we are switching back and forth between Scarlet's quest to find her grandmother, and Cinder's escape from prison and subsequent fugitive life on the run from pretty much everyone in the universe. 

Oops. Did I forget to issue a spoiler warning? Consider this your notice for the rest of the post. I mean, I'm not giving up any of the big plot twists, but if you like to go into a series completely blind like I do, then it's high time you got out of here.

Eventually, Cinder and Scarlet end up on the same team together which leads us to the third novel...

...Cress. Published in 2014 and the novel mirroring the Rapunzel fairytale. We learn that a character we met back in Cinder has actually been trapped in a satellite doing hacking and spying for the evil Queen Levana, but she's more than ready and willing to join the side of justice and help Cinder if she can. This novel was just as fantastic as the other three but took me the longest to get through because we are switching back and forth between a lot of different perspectives which just slowed it down for me until they finally all ended up together. 

The series concludes in the epic 827 page Winter which was published in 2015 and parallels the Snow White fairytale. Winter is the winsome stepdaughter of evil Queen Levana, and she has slowly been going insane from the effort of refusing to use her Lunar gift of bioelectric manipulation. (I can't even get into it with y'all. You'll just have to read them to understand that.) When Cinder and her band of misfits dramatically show up on Luna to prevent the royal wedding between Queen Levana and Emperor Kai, Winter immediately and unquestioningly decides to help them in any way she can.

Oh. My. I can't even begin to tell y'all how much I got sucked into these books. I immediately added them to my amazon wishlist, and I guarantee these are ones I'll read again. The overarching story is excellent. The way Meyer brings these fairytales and characters together is flawless. The action and drama and romance are all on point. I couldn't get enough. It was very fun looking for the fairytale connections in each of the books, and I thought Meyer's parallels were strongest in Cress and Winter. Her writing is clever and funny, and I even texted my book club asking about another possible fairytale correlation that I was picking up on. (Iko as Pinocchio? Anyone? Anyone?!) My only bone to pick with Meyer is that I would have liked a couple more chapters in Winter to resolve Winter's personal storyline. I felt that in the culmination of everything, a few things I wanted to see happen with Winter (and her love interest, hey-o) were not settled in a satisfying way. Meyer has also published a collection of short stories entitled Stars Above about these characters, but as mush as I loved this series, I don't have very much interest in the short stories. I read one that was included in the copy of Cinder I got from the library, and it didn't do much for me.

Overall, would highly recommend these for a fun, slump-busting, escapist read. Once again, blessing all the stars that saved me from discovering these before they were all published and out in the world for me to zoom through as fast as I could, because if I was waiting a year in between for each new installment: Heaven help.

Have you read The Lunar Chronicles? Who's your favorite character from the series? Favorite couple? I'm here for the fandom. Let's talk all about it. What book surprised you with how much you enjoyed it?