Early Review – Cress (Lunar Chronicles, Book 3) by Marissa Meyer (5/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Size: 560 pages
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: February 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0312642976
Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in the Lunar Chronicles series
Source: ARC from Publisher
Rating: 5/5 stars

This is the 3rd book in the Lunar Chronicles by Meyer. The 4th book in the series, Winter, is scheduled to release in Feb of 2015. I have loved all the books in this series and this book was the best in the series so far.

Cress sits alone in her satelite, her job is to spy on Earth for the Lunars…she has been given specific instructions to track down Cinder. However she doesn’t want to. Cinder, Scarlet, Wolf, and Captain Thorne are determined to stop Kai’s wedding to the Lunar Queen Levana, hoping to overthrow Queen Levana and save Earth. Cress is their best hope of doing this, so they go on a mission to rescue Cress…but of course things go awry.

I have really loved this series, it is just so creative. While it is mostly science fiction, it does an excellent job of wrapping fairy tale elements, and steampunk elements into the story as well.

This book switches viewpoint between Cress, Scarlet, Cinder, Thorne, and Kai. This works really well for this book and I enjoyed hearing from all of the characters. All of these characters are interesting, engaging, and likable.

This does an excellent job of mirroring the Rapunzel fairy tale. Cress is in a satellite instead of a tower, and the evil witch is one of Levana’s minions. Cress believes that Thorne is her true love and that he has come to save her. When they crash Thorne loses his sight from a concussion, again mirroring the original fairy tale. I love how elements from Rapunzel are woven into this action packed science fiction story.

This is pretty much Cress’s and Thorne’s book. We learn a lot more about both of them and watch as they adventure through the desert together and slowly start to fall in love. Cress is an interesting blend of tech-savvy and naivete. She’s been pretty isolated her whole life, but she is daring and an excellent hacker.

Cinder also plays a large part in the book as she struggles to learn and control her Lunar abilities. She struggles with the worry that she is turning into someone like Queen Levana, someone she doesn’t want to be.

Most of the time when we hear from Kai, he is planning the wedding with Queen Levana. Kai is struggling to keep things from completely falling apart. He is turning into more of a leader than he was before. He also spends some time trying to unravel Cinder’s past and figure out what her story is.

The plot progresses nicely with lots of twists and turns, excellent action scenes, awesome adventure, and lots of intrigue. It’s an incredibly engaging book. Although it is a long book, it doesn’t feel that way. I breezed right through it and never noticed how much I was reading. It’s very well written. The book ties up some elements nicely, but leaves us at a bit of a cliffhanger as it sets things up for the 4th book in this series.

Overall this was a spectacular read. I love the creative setting, the complex story, the engaging characters, and the writing style. There is so much here to love. I really enjoy how the fairy tale of Rapunzel was subtly woven throughout this story as well. I love the science fiction and steampunk elements throughout the book as well. I highly recommend this whole series to everyone, it is just so different from most of the YA books out there. I can’t wait to see what Winter holds for us!

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Chunkster Reading Challenge (450+ pages)
– Fairy Tales Retold Reading Challenge
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– 100 Books in a Year Reading Challenge