B+
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult
Theme: Fairy Tale, Retelling
Archetype: Diverse Protagonists
Well, it’s been a long road involving five books, but with the latest installment, Winter, The Lunar Chronicles has come to a bloody yet satisfying conclusion. There’s at least one more book on the way, Stars Above, which will be a collection of short stories, but in Winter the main narrative of the series is wrapped up with lots of action, a startling amount of gore, and happy endings for most of the main characters.
The Lunar Chronicles series tells of a future Earth that is menaced by a Lunar Queen, Levana. The series is structured as a science fiction version of fairytales, and it has elements of hard science fiction, fantasy, and steampunk. This review is as much about the series in its entirety as it is about this book.
Cinder is a cyborg with an artificial foot, and she lives with her abusive foster mother and sisters. Scarlet wears a red hoodie, loves her grandmother, and falls for an ex-soldier named Wolf. Cress has been forced to work for Levana since childhood on a satellite, from which she monitors Earth’s net traffic. Winter is Levana’s stepdaughter, and the people love her and say she is even lovelier than Levana, who desires to be the fairest of them all.
When Cinder discovers the truth about her identity, she teams up with Scarlet, Cress, and Winter to overthrow Levana. The teaming-up happens gradually. The first book introduces Cinder and each subsequent book introduces a new character (or brings a previously supporting character into the foreground). Winter sees all of the women, and the men who love them, coordinate their efforts to get a revolution underway.
While this is not a series of romance novels, each of the novels has a romance, and the series wraps up in a manner that will make romance fans quite happy. I love the fact that the male characters are very much in support of the women’s journeys. Sometimes they save the princesses and sometimes the princesses save them, but even in the case of Winter, who is subject to debilitating hallucinations and seems terribly fragile, the women are the ones who drive the story. The men have different personalities, but they share a common trait of being happy to support the women they love. They aren’t threatened by a woman’s ambition, or intelligence, or power, or agency – they adore it. Somewhat to my surprise, I’ve only written one full-length review of a book from this series, Scarlet. One of the five books, Fairest, is a short prequel, and I missed that one, but I’ve very much enjoyed the main four books (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter). The reimagining of the fairytales is clever and new and fun (and sometimes horrifying). The world building is not hugely complex, but certain places in particular feel very real and detailed. While I felt the overall tone was one of adventure, there’s some serious content here, especially in Winter, where all the characters deal with the physical, political, and emotional consequences of the entire story.
One thing I appreciate about the series is its matter-of-fact approach to diversity. Cinder and Kai are Chinese, Scarlet is French, Wolf is described as “olive skinned” and his actual name is Ze’ev, which is a Hebrew name (that means ‘wolf’). So many futuristic books default to Caucasian/Christian mode with their characters, but this series takes a more global and realistic approach. Winter is Black, which is particularly delightful since she’s supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the history of ever. Suck it, racist beauty standards. The one thing I wish is that at least one of the couples were m/m or f/f. It would have fit in well with the series’ commitment to tweaking fairytale set-ups and making them something new.
The final book, Winter, brings all the characters together and gives Winter a more central role (she’s loosely inspired by Snow White). Do not start reading the series with this book. Start with Cinder. By the time we get to the last book, Winter, all the exposition that could possibly happen has happened and you are in the middle of the action. Winter is a long book, but fast-moving with the exception of a few sections in which people try to figure out their next move. It’s technically YA, but it feels very adult. Unlike a lot of YA, it’s not told in first person present tense, which is a nice change, and Meyer kept her promise to avoid love triangles at all costs.
Winter is written in such a way that any review of the book is basically a review of the series. Now that it’s over, I feel that the series as a whole was more than the sum of its parts (the individual books) although the parts were, in their own way, pretty wonderful. Winter is weirdly slow at times and madly rushed in others, but it does a great job of pulling together all the parts of a complicated story.
Since Winter was a bit messy, but otherwise effective, I’m giving it a B+, but I’d give the entire series an A-.
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Hmm, I’ll try not to read this one first… for some reason I have the worst time starting a series at the beginning! Thanks for the great review!
I’ve only read Cinder, which I enjoyed apart from the only so-so world building, but I was put off by what a MASSIVE cliffhanger the ending was. There was zero resolution, and ended with a pretty horrible scene, so to have the book basically go TO BE CONTINUED with the heroine in peril and all that other stuff going on kind of soured me on the series. (I had a similar reaction to Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking series… if I hadn’t had all three books on hand to read, I would have been pretty furious.) Your mileage may vary!
I literally finished Winter last night, and then started the novels about Levana. It was definitely a satisfying conclusion, and now that it’s wrapped up, I can recommend it to a friend that hates cliffhangers.
I would not have wanted to read Fairest before Winter, it’s going to make me sympathetic towards Levana and therefore conflicted about her takedown by Cinder.
I loved this series. I haven’t gotten Winter yet — been too busy– but this is definitely moving up my TBR mountain now.
Do not waste your time with Fairest. I wish I’d never read it as it’s big reveal was the same as the reveal in Winter (and since I already knew it was coming, it didn’t have much oomph).
I so wish these novels were free standing – interwoven, sure, but independent. I hate cliffhanger endings, and was extremely disappointed by the conclusion of Cinder. I cared enough to read the whole series, but that caring was at its lowest ebb by the time it all wrapped up. I feel like the heroine of each successive book is cheated out of having her full story, because all along we’re still preoccupied with the previous plots, so by the time we get to Winter, half of the book is about everyone else.
Still, considering how uninterested I am in YA as a genre, and how much I loathe steampunk almost without exception, the fact that I read each of these as soon as they came out is a huge endorsement.
Okay, so maybe I mis-read Cinder (I did read it almost two years ago) but I recall Cinder’s backstory being about how she was smuggled from the “western” area? So she’s not, technically, Chinese like the prince is? Which I thought was a crying shame. But maybe I just mis-understood it?
I did really enjoy Cinder. It was surprisingly dark, for a YA. It was not afraid to hit hard (I think I cried twice). Good to know it wraps up with book four, guess I’m going to have to finish the series now :).
The Lunar Chronicals was one of my favorite reads last year (although I also skipped Fairest). I agree that the series was greater than the parts – the books were a little uneven but the whole thing was so much fun and so engrossing.
I thought the ending of Winter was a little anti-climactic and unfinished feeling, however. I wanted to know more about Winter and how she recovered from her lunar illness.
@lovelloftheWolves: I thought so too based on my read of the book, but apparently she’s mixed Chinese/Caucasian based on this wiki (and has brown hair).
However, when I read the first book originally, it was a little too Last Samurai for me and I don’t think Cinder being hapa really makes a huge difference in that assessment because she identifies as part of the ~superior~ “Lunar” race first and foremost. Also, I have mixed feelings about the series because of how much is stolen/borrowed from Sailor Moon in the first book. I don’t mind retellings, but taking so much from something that is still an existing IP makes me really uncomfortable. (Usagi is the lost moon princess, her love is the mysterious tuxedo mask Kaito, etc etc.)
Also biracial main characters who are half-white and half-asian in fiction is another can of worms, but probably better hashed out in a more asian-american space. Basically, certain works of fiction tend to default to this But Not Too Foreign trope where being half asian is often seen as a delightful touch of exoticism while still remaining relatable and “white enough.” Or sometimes just making them literally white like in that one movie Emma Stone is in where she’s cast as a half-Japanese woman. (Incidentally, the Japanese do a version of this that’s the reverse, where it’s the white side that provides the “exoticism.”) It also often papers over the unique experiences of biracial people both in Asia and in the West by writing them as essentially white people (which is kiiiiiiindddd of what Cinder does).
However, I think taken in the context of the diversity of the later books and how it’s ambient diversity I’m not going to drag the Lunar Chronicles as a whole.