Cress
For the past few months I've lacked that wonderful feeling of wanting to read and instead ended up in a real slump. Though I have many books on my TBR pile I still don't get around to reading so I've decided to go back to a series that I really enjoy and reread it in the hopes that my reading lust will come back. Cress is the third instalment in the Lunar Chronicles and my favourite in the series. I've read it twice before and I love it just as much now as I did when I first picked it up three years ago.
In this novel, author Marissa Meyer introduces a third female protagonist, the centre of her very own fairy tale. Cress is a shell, living on a satellite orbiting Earth every sixteen hours. She was brought there from Luna seven years ago by Sybil Mira to work as a hacker and a spy for the Lunar crown. Cress knows everything important going on on Earth, which includes the man-hunt for Linh Cinder and her fellow accomplice, Carswell Thorne. Though Queen Levana has had Cress search for Cinder and the spaceship she's hiding on, Cress has been protecting the cyborg for some time now. It didn't take long for her to find them in space and in the hopes that Cinder can make a difference, Cress turn her back on her mistress and the queen. Queen Levana can't rule a kingdom on Earth or it will be the launching pad to a worldwide war and Cress and the Rampion crew seems to be the only people who can stop that from happening. But the ride towards a happily ever after is neither smooth nor easy.
Something I really love about this series is that Meyer beautifully creates a handful of separate tales and manages to wove them together. She tells the story, about the long-lost Lunar princess out to reclaim her throne, through different viewpoints to allow the reader the full perspective on everything that’s going on. That also gives you a bigger understanding for many of the characters. They, in turn, all have strong personalities and different things that makes them unique. It’s fun to read about the Rampion crew and their fight to overthrow Levana but it’s even more fun to follow each individual character’s story in the hopes that they all will get a happily ever after.
Cress takes the reader across the world and I like how Meyer subtly points out differences from one place to another. Two new and important characters are introduced in the novel and though Jacin has quite a snarky and arrogant personality I still found myself softening towards him. Cinder and the guys are trying to stop the royal wedding from happening and that leads to a lot of bickering, which brought a lot of laughs from me, before the ultimate plan is created. And while all of this is happening aboard the Rampion, Emperor Kai is in New Beijing, worried what a marriage to Levana will mean for the Commonwealth and wondering what Cinder is up to, if she has, in fact, found the lost princess who could change everything.
The stakes are higher in this book and yet you can feel it growing towards an explosion in the last book; Winter. I wasn’t too fond of Winter the first time I read it but I think I will give it another chance now and see if it’s better than I remember. Nevertheless, this is a great series with a lot of action, romance and comedy that I think will speak to everyone who enjoys fairy tale retellings. If you haven’t already, jump on the Lunar Chronicles train – you won’t regret it.