Gwen’s Love of Cress by Marissa Meyer

I can’t believe how this series just keeps getting better! Cress has a ton of action all the way through, more romance, the war develops, more characters are introduced, and forms an all-around great book! 

Series: The Lunar Chronicles, Book 3

Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Fairy Tale Retellings, Romance

Rating: 5 stars

Description:

In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.

Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who’s only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.

Review:

I can’t believe how this series just keeps getting better! Cress has a ton of action all the way through, more romance, the war develops, more characters are introduced, and forms an all-around great book!

As in the first two books in the series, Cinder and Scarlet, the main characters, which are constantly being added to, keep getting into tight scrapes that seem to have no way out (but then they find the way out), and they split up a lot. Thus, the narration switches between perspectives, which Marissa Meyer deals with beautifully. Many miraculous “coincidences” and connections are made in this book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, although some were quite predictable.

I loved the connection in Scarlet with the wolves from Little Red Riding Hood howling at the Luna.  Similarly, I love the moon and Rapunzel connection through the name Crescent and shortened to Cress! It’s so cool how Marissa Meyer combines fairy tales, the moon, and science fiction ideas into one amazing series!

(Small spoilers) Cress has a similar ending to Scarlet, with a big fight with the “bad guys” and plot build up, then a final concluding scene with romantic proclamations of love in the Rampion. One of my favorite scenes in Cress, where there is a big plot to break up a large party, which of course ends in a big fight scene, reminded me of my favorite part in Fire by Kristin Cashore, where a similar thing occurs. I love books with big schemes like this one even more than I love books with wild hunts through the woods, in which the main character is trying to evade capture (such as in Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith and Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder)!

Since this is the third book in the series, there is little to say without repeating myself about the characters, writing style, or plot, other than that it all gets much better. If you read Cinder and didn’t fall in love at first, I cannot stop encouraging you to stick with the series anyway — you will not regret it! I can’t wait until Winter is published in 2015, so I can finally read the end of the outstanding Lunar Chronicles!