Review: Cress

Cress by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cress has spent most of her life trapped in a satellite, watching netscreens and spying on officials down on earth for the workings of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana. Her latest orders are to locate the cyborg Cinder and the group she has helping her: Captain Thorne, Scarlet and Wolf.

Rather than do their bidding, Cress makes an attempt to reach the group, hoping for the chance to join them as they work to stop Queen Levana's plans. But they need to rescue her from the satellite first.

Despite their best intentions, the group is separated during the rescue attempt, leaving everyone scrambling to locate each other while staying out of the reach of every citizen on the lookout for the missing cyborg mechanic and her crew. As they work to find each other, the group must also start work on a plan to prevent Queen Levana from marrying Prince Kai, a marriage that would give her legitimate power over the fate of earth and it's citizens. Time is running out and the world needs Cinder, Scarlet and now Cress, to work together and stop the Queen before its too late.


Finally, I finished this book! It took me ages because I just didn't have the time to sit down and ignore everything else so I could devote everything I had to reading this book.

I thought Cress was lovely as a character, sweet and endearing, well-adjusted despite the life she'd led being trapped in a satellite and being forced to spy on Earth and all it's more important citizens. I thought Thorne was given the chance to really prove what kind of character he really is, a man who could talk a good game and charm everyone in sight, but was willing to do whatever it took to save those that needed his help.

The reveals in this book were easy enough to figure out but that didn't matter to me because I love these characters. I want to see Cinder, Kai, Scarlet, Wolf, Cress and Thorne overthrow Queen Levana and save the world. It seems ridiculous to think that everything depends on this group, but Meyer's writing has managed to create a story that makes it believable. This group can change the future for the better, they can inspire a revolution and the stakes are that much higher in this book because the ending is coming.

What has really helped these books has been the careful distance that Meyer has created between the books and the fairy tales that inspired or influenced them. Cinder had too much in it that depended on the story of Cinderella. With Scarlet and now Cress, Meyer has taken what she needed to make the somewhat obvious connections and then has taken her books in entirely different directions. Their strength lies in the world Meyer has created, not the similarities that can be recognized from the stories they came from. I love books 2 and 3 of The Lunar Chronicles that much more than book 1 because they are their own stories, complete adventures that stand different enough on their own to make me love them and have fun reading them. I can't wait to finish Winter to see how everything is wrapped up.


Rating: 9 Stars


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