Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I liked this book. It wasn’t over the moon amazing, but a pretty good sequel to Cinder. I liked Scarlet as a character and it was cool to see how the rest of the commonwealth worked (logistic wise); there was definitely a lot more world building in this novel. But overall, I didn’t adore the book meaning it could take me a while to get to the next one.
Spoilers Below
Something I really liked about this book (since I don’t want to start off the review on a down note), that you don’t usually see in sequels where the POV is with a new character, is the original character’s POV less than halfway thru the novel. I loved hearing from Cinder in the second or third chapter and her storyline throughout the novel was one I was constantly looking forward to.
I also really liked the introduction of Thorn as an alternate love interest for Cinder. While I am almost completely positive she will end up with Kai at the end of the series, I’m really hoping the opposite. There were a few things about Thorn that irked me, but I really liked his sass and humor. I think half the laughs I got from this book, were courtesy of him.
At first, I thought Wolf was pretty adorable, just because of the way he was constantly so shy and timid, but after the wolf attack I very quickly change my opinion. Honestly, I didn’t really like Wolf that much; maybe it was because of all the alpha male talk… Really, I was just mad about how he acted when the thaumaturge was in control of everyone and even though it wasn’t his fault, I just really couldn’t find it in myself to forgive what he had done.
The plot twist that there were more lunars on earth really tripped me up. Especially the fact that they were controlling the wolf gangs; it just confused me. Did the gangs exist before the thaumaturges arrived? Were they just created to find princess selene and then wage war on the globe? If someone could clear this up for me, that would be great.
Something I really didn’t like, (I kind of touched on this above) was Scarlet and Wolf’s relationship. I thought they were really cute together at first, but after the entire scene at the theater I was just done with them. While I will admit that Wolf did help Scarlet escape the way he did it really annoyed me. I mean he could have found a different way to give her the ID chip other than kissing her, when it was obvious she was pretty mad at him. That part just made me angry. I also didn’t like the part at the end where he almost killed Scarlet. Their relationship just seems pretty toxic to me.
Now, onto the plot, I was pretty surprised that the Lunar war began so quickly. I thought the author was going to wait until at least book three. This battle almost seemed like a preamble instead of a real war, and I guess that is kind of what the author was going for. Just a show of strength by the lunars, of what they could do if Kai didn’t submit. Still, I almost feel like the ending was too easy, like there wasn’t even (what I like to call) a big shebang.
I was very surprised that Kai accepted the marriage alliance so quickly actually. I didn’t expect him to give in so easily. Did anyone else feel this way? Overall, I think the ending was pretty interesting though. I like that now our cast of characters are mostly united and ready to face Levana. I also think that the final scene where Cinder is vowing to train so that she will be able to fight the queen was super powerful.
Lastly, I found the part where we heard from Levana’s POV super interesting. I’m always interested in what’s going on inside most villain’s heads in novels and seeing her logic was eye opening. Don’t worry though, I’m not going to the dark side; she still is a psychopathic queen who dominates her people via mind control. I do really want to know who the ring on her finger was from though…
Overall, this was a nice book; I didn’t love it, but no real heavy complaints. It will probably take me a while to finish the series, since I am currently reading four books at once, but we’ll see. Maybe by May or June I will be able to get back to the Lunar chronicles.
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