Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Book Review: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Title: Winter
Author: Marissa Meyer
Series: #4 in The Lunar Chronicles
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends 
Publication Date: November 10, 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Sci-fi, Fairytale Retellings
Pages: 827 
Source: Library


Literary Awards:
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction (2015)

Synopsis:
Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking that that of her stepmother; Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won't approve of her feelings for her childhood friend - the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn't as weak as Levana believes her to be and she's been undermining her stepmother's wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that's been raging for far too long. 

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

My Thoughts: 
In the final book in the Lunar Chronicles, we are introduced to Winter, stepdaughter of Queen Levana. Winter is a Lunar, touched by madness due to her refusal to use her gift to glamour herself or manipulate others.  Winter's relationship with Jacin, as well as with the characters in the previous books, is explored and she plays a pretty big role in the final play by play of Cinder and Levana's personal battle. 

This book was sooo long! I feel like if Meyer had just added another couple we could have had a 5th book! All of the Lunar Chronicle books are fast paced and easy to get through quickly but this one took me a while.  That is in no way to be construed as the book being bad in any way. It was really good and I enjoyed a pretty big majority of it. Life just got in the way and did not allow me to read this any quicker.

There were a lot of edge-of-my-seat moments in this book!
Now that I've read this, I see that Fairest was best read before Winter, if only to get a taste of what was to come. I don't always have literal out-loud reactions to books but I had one with this book towards the end. I don't want to give anything away but I was afraid for my 'ships' for a little while!

The ending was pretty satisfying. With a lot of series I read, I find myself a little (or very) underwhelmed or wishing things had turned out differently. With Winter I didn't have any of those thoughts. It turned out exactly how I would have expected.

As a retelling, there were many hints and allusions to Snow White in this book. These connections are very loose but are still pretty clear. As a retelling series, Meyer has done an excellent job of weaving these stories together. I've read a few retellings that didn't really entice me to read more so I put off reading Cinder for years. Cinderella is probably one of my least favorite 'fairytales'. I'm glad I gave it a chance and continued the series though. This is definitely my favorite retelling series so far.

The Lunar Chronicles is a very entertaining, fast-paced series with lovable characters. I'd very much recommend these books to anyone who enjoys retellings, science-fiction, fantasy, and books with lots of great couples to 'ship'. 

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