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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Re-read.
Rating: 4.5/5
Pages: 823
Started: 31 December 2023
Finished: 1 January 2024
Summary:
Princess Winter of Luna is the most beautiful girl on Luna--and she is losing her mind, trading her sanity for a promise to never use her Lunar gift to manipulate another person's mind. Though her guard and best friend Jacin Clay spent years begging her to break the promise, she has refused, and now Jacin isn't even there to ask. Instead, Winter must resist the visions that plague, as well as her aunt Levana's jealous control, as she becomes entangled in the revolution beginning to sweep Luna.
Though they've successfully kidnapped Prince Kai, Cinder and her friends know there's still a long way to go until they can take the Lunar throne. Through all their scheming and planning, their entering Luna as part of a wedding entourage and their beginning a revolution in the sectors far from the capitol and its wealth, everyone is aware that Queen Levana is a formidable opponent. Yet they have no choice but to go ahead with their plans, to fight for the future of not only Luna, but of Earth as well.
Thoughts:
I love this book just as much as I did when I first read it on Kindle just after it came out years ago. It's such an exciting and lovely book to read, especially with all the different characters' missions and plots and specialties. The specific competence of each character is satisfying, as is watching each one of them push themselves out of their niche. Cinder leading, Thorne confessing, Cress pretending to be a confident and conniving Lunar--each character is so clearly defined, which makes their actions and deviations very cohesive. Each character fits into a pretty specific archetype--Scarlet the female firebrand, Thorne the irreverent and charming Han Solo-esque hero, etc--but the characters are just complex enough that they're very fun to read.
I remain fascinated by the book's focus on beauty and the message it sends. In an interview printed in the back of one of her books, Meyer states that she doesn't write her books with a message in mind, but it's impossible not to create one when a fairytale is being re-told. Heteronormativity and beauty standards remain upheld in this book especially with Winter, whose goodness and beauty seem inextricably linked. However, Winter's beauty is unintentional and imperfect thanks to her scars and her lack of care for her appearance, which is what differentiates it from Levana's curated Lunar glamour. This seems to suggest the importance of morality and the person behind the beauty, but doesn't particularly examine the issue of the human obsession with beauty in general. Furthermore, Cinder projects a video of Levana's 'ugly' self, un-glamoured and covered in burn scars, to ruin Levana's concentration and to expose her. Though this is tempered by Cinder's own burns and her realization that it's Levana's need for perfection, not her burns, that make her ugly, this does bring the archetype of the ugly and evil witch into a futuristic retelling that does not necessarily need it.
The other way that beauty and disfigurement comes into the story is in all the parallels and foils between characters. Winter, Cinder, and Levana, specifically, are all royal and beautiful (really or by glamour), all three have some physical difference or scarring that 'mars' that beauty, and each of them handles it in a different way. Winter's beauty is so extreme that her scars only augment her perfection. Throughout the series Cinder grows more comfortable with her cyborg limbs, an acceptance encouraged by her freedom, their utility, and Kai's approval, overall creating the message that a good person can accept and come to love their difference. And Levana's facade of beauty, and obsession with physical perfection, associate such a fixation with selfishness and evil. Cinder's message, especially combined with that of Levana's as her foil, is a very positive one. However, Winter's is less so; she is perfect, and Levana as her foil is not though she tries to be, ultimately suggesting that beauty is a prize that one either has or does not. Though this message is less timely and less hopeful, it is also very much a result of the culture of fairytales themselves, where goodness and evil are black and white, as are the traits that accompany them.
The one part of this book that was difficult to read was the hopeless stretch about half-way through, where every plan or attempted action was immediately foiled, and all the characters seemed incompetent and ineffective. It's not fun to read heroes who can't ever realize their plans. Though a lot of the improvisation that the characters did was exciting, it would have been much nicer had a few of their plans actually worked, or at least had they felt a bit more powerful. Yet it is true that the idea of a revolution of the people, orchestrated by the determined and the scrappy rather than by those in power, is quite cool. Knowing the way our world tends to remain willfully ignorant to suffering, out of fear for their own safety, it's generally inspiring to read such a story of revolution.
The character dynamics in this book are so fun, and nowhere is this more evident than in the final chapters of the book. Though perhaps the ending does wrap up a little too neatly for my taste, it is a fairytale; that's how they're meant to work. And scenes where each romantic pair of character reconcile or decide on their future is ridiculously cute. Scarlet and Wolf's is the most moving, and definitely my favorite, but it's Cinder and Kai's final conversation that has the most power. They're just teens, but they're also world leaders, and their seriousness and planning is comforting and inspiring.
This book made me so happy to re-read. I'm endlessly glad it held up so well to my sixth-grade memory, and it's definitely being promoted back to the top of my recommendations list.