Becky's View: Cress by Marissa Meyer

Cress by Marissa Meyer
♦publisher: Feiwel & Friends
♦release date: February 4th, 2014
♦hardcover, 550 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦series: The Lunar Chronicles, book 3
  book 1: Cinder (review)
  book 2: Scarlet (review)
  book 4: Winter (coming Feb 2015)
♦source: from publisher for honest review

Rapunzel’s tower is a satellite. She can’t let down her hair—or her guard.

In this third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.

Their best hope lies with Cress, who has been trapped on a satellite since childhood with only her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker—unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

When a daring rescue goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing stop her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only ones who can.

Review:  For me, there is nothing out there that quite compares to this phenomenal series.  With this third installment, Cress, The Lunar Chronicles only strengthens its spot at the top of my list of favorites. I might even go so far as to say that with Cress, this series has outdone itself. While all three books have received 5 well-earned cupcakes from me, and while each one had me laughing and worried, excited, and hopeful, Cress is the first one to make me break down in actual tears.  Though I come close often, I don’t actually cry very easily at books…and for that I love this one all the more. 

It also speaks volumes for how much I love these characters.  The collective crew from the end of Scarlet is back and just as amusing as ever.  They discover that Cress, a girl who has helped Cinder from behind the scenes from the beginning, is actually a prisoner in a satellite and they go to rescue her.  The rescue goes awry and this leads to the entire cast being split up and thrown into their own adventures both on earth and on the moon.  Cress adds something sweet to the melting pot of characters; having been isolated her whole life, she has a certain innocence and awkwardness, but also having been a hacker, she definitely makes herself useful to Cinder’s cause.  She gets thrown together with Thorne, whom she’s been crushing on for years, following his escapades from afar and always thinking of him as a misunderstood bad boy. With Thorne’s cockiness and her bit of feistiness and naiveté, the two of their personalities play off of each other with a perfect blend of sweetness and hilarity. 

Cinder’s plight to stop Kai from marrying Levana has become about way more than her own feeling for him. The fate of the earth will rest in the hands of Cinder and her crew and they take it on valiantly as the plot intensifies and catapults us into the final chapter of the Lunar Chronicles. What’s most amazing about this book is that even at a hefty 550 pages, there is not one moment where the pacing lets up, not one page that feels like mid-series filler. That is definitely a rare thing. 

I can’t even begin to imagine how long the wait for Winter is going to feel! Torture!

Find Marissa Meyer online: Website  •  Twitter  •  Facebook

Purchase Cress: Amazon  •  BookDepository  •  Indiebound

I'm currently giving away two SIGNED ARCS of Cress!

Click here to go to my Marissa Meyer event recap post and enter!

 

Marissa Meyer Event Recap & Signed Cress ARC Giveaway x 2!

A few weeks ago, we drove an hour through pouring-down rain into the bay area to see Marissa Meyer, the author of my favorite series, The Lunar Chronicles.  As much as I hate driving in the rain and traffic, hearing this incredible author talk about her books and writing was 100% worth it.

We walked into the children’s section of  Book Passage, a sweet little book shop in Corte Madera, and found plenty of shelves stacked high with the gorgeous new copies of Cress, as well as Scarlet and Cinder for those who needed to catch up.  In the signing room, there was a table of fun bookmarks, buttons and purple hair combs with the Cress title on them, so clever to go with the Rapunzel theme of the book! 

Marissa Meyer was introduced and first and foremost, she apologized for bringing the rain with her from Seattle, where she had just flown in from.  She delighted the crowd with many fun stories about growing up in a family of nerds (driving the point home by mentioning she had an uncle who remodeled his attic to look like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise—I wish she’d had pictures of that!) and shared a really awesome picture of herself as a child dressed up as a cling-on at the opening night of one of the Star Trek movies.  Some of her early writing was fan-fiction based on her love of Sailor Moon, and was ecstatic that so many in the audience were familiar with the show!  So the world of Sci-fi and fantasy definitely runs in this author’s blood. 

She share that early versions of the Lunar Chronicle stories were written during NaNoWriMo, an event that she is a huge fan of and definitely encourages every aspiring writer to try.  A really early version of Cinder was written as an entry to a Seattle-based contest where the person who wrote the most words in a single month would win a walk-on role on a Star Trek episode. Sadly she missed the prize by 1000 words, but found out later that they never filmed the episode anyhow!  AND she ended up with a book that would later get her her first publisher deal---a perfect consolation!

Lastly, before open up the floor for questions, she treated the audience to a little storytelling! We got to pick which story out of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, or Snow White (which the final book, Winter, will be based on) and she told us the original fairy tale version, in all its grim and dark detail.  We chose Rapunzel, to Marissa’s relief---she mentioned that Red Riding Hood is the most gruesome and there were some small children in the audience that night! 

She then graciously answered tons of questions, and even more graciously signed tons and tons of books, all the while chatting away with her excited fans.  It was a great night!

Oh, and most exciting for me, she confirmed for me that there is definitely some Han Solo inspiration in Captain Thorne.  I suspected as much! ♥♥♥

*GIVEAWAY!*

I had 2 ARC copies of Cress, but of course I bought a gorgeous finished copy at the signing for my own collection, so I'll pass those two ARCs on to two lucky winners! 

Enter below!

•Must be 13 or older, or have parent permission

•US mailing addresses only please

•Ends March 5th, 2014 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Becky's View: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
♦publisher: Feiwel & Friends
♦release date: February 5th, 2013
♦hardcover, 454 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦series: The Lunar Chronicles,  book 2
  my review of book 1, Cinder
♦source: from publisher at ALA

Cinder returns in the second thrilling installment of the New York Times-bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive.

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own.

As Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Review: And so, my serious love affair with this series continues.  When you love a first in a series as much as I loved Cinder, there is always that fear and trepidation going into book 2---will it fall flat? Will it have the dreaded second-book slump? Will it just not live up to the wonder of the first?  Thankfully, the answer to all three of those questions is a very adamant NO.  Scarlet was an incredible and exciting follow up to Cinder.  And what made it even more fun was that I was SO busy during the week I was reading Scarlet that I was forced to move through the story slowly, savoring each twist and turn so much more than I might have if I'd taken a day or two and just zipped through it.  The anticipation of getting back to a book every time you have to set it down is a sure sign of it's greatness. 

In Scarlet, we get some fantastic new characters. There is, of course, Scarlet.  With an attitude as fiery as her red curls, she's one who knows her way around hovercrafts and rifles alike.  Her grandmother is missing and she is not going to let anyone or any fear stand in her way of rescuing her.  She reluctantly teams up with Wolf, who claims he can lead Scarlet to the kidnappers.  Even as they grow closer and build up trust, you never can be quite sure of him---he is, after all, the "big bad Wolf" in this retelling!  Still, the chemistry between them is undeniable and well, you'll just have to read to find out how that turns out, but I loved it and it certainly kept me at the edge of my seat!

The story is told from a few different POVs, but mainly it alternates between Scarlet and Cinder.  Cinder is as smart and strong-willed as ever, but still a bit wounded from her experiences with Kai and how that ended up.  She is in a major struggle with her own destiny, knowing what everyone expects of her in her newly discovered identity, but not so sure she is ready to take it on.  Another new character is Thorne, Cinder's accidental new partner in crime, who very much reminded me of Han Solo from Star Wars. :D  Had to love him---a bit shifty and an integrity that is definitely questionable, but still a character that is fun and entertaining to read. 

The world that Meyer creates has expanded it's reach from Japan into France and it also grows in all it's detailed, imaginative, futuristic glory, and definitely in it's darkness and danger.  A new vicious threat is introduced, Queen Levana's evil grip gets more powerful, and time continues to run thin as Kai makes a desperate decision and this story hurtles forward. OH, it is going to be an awfully long wait for Cress, book three in this series!  And have you heard?  It features Rapunzel and takes place in the Sahara Desert! I'm definitely intrigued!

Find Marissa Meyer online: Website  •  Twitter  •  Facebook

Purchase Scarlet:  Amazon  •  BN.com  •  BookDepository  •  Indiebound