story craft

NEW Book Review Template

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Format: Paperback

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Cautions: difficult topics: mind control, manipulation, captivity, human trafficking, and the bloodiness that comes with war and rebellion all appear in this book; romance: there are a few kisses and suggestive remarks made by one of the traffickers.

Main themes: Friendship, overcoming, freedom, guilt and shame, heroism

Favorite quote: “I believe it is the mark of a great leader to question the decisions that came before him.”

Review:

What if your only friends were the ones you created—and they only existed in digital format? For Cress—a captive of head thaumaturge, Mistress Sybil, and the cruel Lunar queen, Levana—this was the everyday reality aboard her tiny satellite. 

Although Cress attempted to hide from the moon (because who wasn’t captive to Levana in some way at this point, right?), she couldn’t hide from the tragedy taking place on Earth, a tragedy in which she’d been an unwilling accomplice. 

This third installment in The Lunar Chronicles follows the journey of Lunar hacker, Cress, and disgraced American pilot (and thief) Captain Carswell Thorne. It didn’t take long for me to get drawn into their story because I had already fallen in love with the series, although I did want more of sassy Scarlet and Wolf in this one, but maybe they’re my favorites. Still, Cress’s gentle spirit was a warm welcome in a story so filled with tragedy and violence, lies and betrayal. 

With Cress, we also get a glimpse into a few new settings: the Rampion (crowded as it had become at the end of Scarlet), Cress’s satellite (ehem, prison), and Africa. And having never been aboard a spaceship, on a satellite, or to Africa, I felt like I could have been visiting any of those places in a futuristic world with these characters as my crew. I also love the way Meyer uses her setting to inform the mood of the story. Like music in a movie, it gave me hints to what might be coming. 

If you’ve read to this point in the story, then you’ll see some familiar faces in this book: Cinder, Emperor Kaito (Kai), Dr. Erland, Torin, Iko, Carswell Thorne, Wolf, Scarlet, thaumaturges Sybil and Aimery, Levana, Pearl, Adri, and Jerrico. But we also meet a few new faces: Cress ([obviously] who we’ve kind of met but didn’t really know—and this story makes her shine), Jacin, Winter, Liam Kinney, and the Lunar villagers in Africa. 

I love that the characters we know almost become characters we don’t know as they keep pushing to become exactly who they need to be, who they’re meant to be. But I’m also impressed by the fact that Meyer draws us in to the point that we really care about the secondary and tertiary characters, like Torin, Iko, and Kinney. Speaking of old characters becoming new, Meyer transforms Thorne from obnoxious, arrogant goofball to shaky representation of the hero Cress believed he was from the beginning. Into the hero she knew he could be. And oh, sweet Cress, goes from being anxious about everything to being a heroine in her own right. Though she doesn’t come across as the heroine of her own story in a typical sense, like Cinder or Scarlet did, her greatest win might just be that she holds onto her softness among weary warriors and tragic and difficult circumstances. 

Cress’s story was not my favorite book in this series, but it was a beautiful and necessary piece to move the show along. And let’s be honest, who wouldn’t fall in love with Cress? Looking at you Thorne. So much remains to be seen in the final book in the Lunar Chronicles, Winter, which is currently at the top of my nightstand reading stack, and I’m about halfway through. I can’t wait to write to you about the way the story wraps up! 

My take:

People don’t always turn out how we might expect—sometimes they’re better than the image we’ve created in our minds, sometimes worse, sometimes just . . . different. But these differences, when united in a common goal, can create some of the strongest stands for good and against evil. We work well when we work together for good.