Cress by Marissa Meyer
Series: Lunar Chronicles #3
Published by Feiwel & Friends
Published on: February 4 2014
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 560
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
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Rapunzel’s tower is a satellite. She can’t let down her hair—or her guard.
In this third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.
Their best hope lies with Cress, who has been trapped on a satellite since childhood with only 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 goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing stop her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only ones who can.
I’ve been very up front about my love of fairy tales, and Rapunzel is one of the only Grimms’ Fairy Tales that has a somewhat happy ending (even if it is a little bit risqué). In the original version, the prince finds Rapunzel after hearing her sing. He comes back day after day to listen to her, and eventually he sees the Witch and learns how to gain entrance to the tower. Which he does. Frequently.
*suggestively waggles eyebrows*
Which brings us to how Witch discovers that she is no longer Rapunzel’s only visiter—Rapunzel is found to be inthefamilyway (ifyouknowwhatImean).
Anyway, Witch is so furious at Rapunzel’s “betrayal” that she cuts her hair and casts her out into the wilderness. Then she waits . . . cue ominous music . . . for Prince to show up, and when he does, she flings him from the top of the tower, and briars scratch his eyes, BLINDING him, when he lands.
Stuff happens and they live. Happily. Ever. After.
Cress by Marissa Meyer is the Rapunzel-based third installment of the Lunar Chronicles, and while I had no urges to throw or otherwise damage books in this reading, I did have to stifle an urge to throw or otherwise damage Cress (the MC, not the book).
I’ll say up front—until around the 75% mark, Cress is downright A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G.
Fortunately, having multiple other POVs kept this from being overwhelming. I’ve already stated that Rapunzel is my all-time favorite fairy tale (and has been since I was like five), so mayhap my expectations were always going to be too high. All I can say is that I was dancing with glee that Meyer got the blinding (of the “prince”) part right, while simultaneously pulling out giant handfuls of hair every time Cress did a not-at-all-endearing imitation of a certain Disney character.
BUT Cinder and Kai were spot-on, and Thorne was as incorrigible as ever, so it balanced out (Scarlet and Wolf weren’t a huge part of the storyline this go-round). AND once I hit the 75% mark, Cress stopped being silly and ridiculous and started being . . . something else. I don’t know exactly what, but I didn’t hate her anymore, so that’s all that matters.
Or almost all that matters. I figured out a while back that my rating system is mostly based on THE FEELS. The books that are decent, but don’t really evoke much emotion get 2 to 3.5 stars. The books that have me doing various things of a superlative nature get everything else. Problem is, sometimes a book is pretty MEH until the very end and then BAM—THE FEELS. Suddenly I forget all of the MEH from the front 90% of the book. I’ve been working on that. Which is why Cress gets 4 stars and not 5. THE FEELS actually kicked in around the same time I stopped wanting to wallop Cress, and she was the minority (no other characters drove me batty). BUT she was the main character, so I didn’t feel I could in good conscience be totally swayed by THE FEELS.
And I felt that Meyer wrapped up Cress beautifully. Am I happy to be waiting another twelve months to read the conclusion? No. Of course not, but I’m still ridiculously excited to see what happens next. Especially with a nutso Lunar princess waiting in the wings. Winter is clearly C-R-A-Z-Y.
The Lunar Chronicles:
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My name is Jessica and I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I’m trying my hand at writing, but mostly I read. My favorite genres are Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, and the YA versions of those genres, but if there is a book of a different color getting lots of buzz, I’ll read it too, just to be informed. If I’m not reading or writing, I’m probably on Goodreads or Pinterest or baking blueberry pies because I love them.
She is here in Dallas on Friday so I am going to pick up a copy then 🙂 I am a total ender–a book can be “meh” for most of it but if it ends well it will rank high 🙂
Lucky! No one ever comes to Chattanooga. And I’m an ender too, unless I’m specifically trying not to be LOL.
75%is a lot to be annoying… But well it seems that the last 15% are wonderful, I’m curious too see how they really are. You know because of you I bought Cinder, but now I need to receive it. I hope I’ll like it…
Yay! I hope you do too. And the front 75% wasn’t pure Cress. It was Cinder and Kai (from book 1) and Thorne (from book 2) too, so it was still really good—it just wasn’t my favorite 😉
I’m alway been curious about this series, and I started book 1, but it didn’t grab me 🙁 I think I need to go back when all the books are out, maybe I just wasn’t in the in mood then. I was heavily into heart-stopping and naughty romance back then..LOL
Yeah that happens to me a lot too. Like right now I’m on a YA SciFi/Fantasy kick. You just have to ride it out LOL. I would definitely give it another shot if the mood strikes you though 😉
Yeah the real Rapunzel story was insane
I know, right? All the old German fairy tales are.
I have Cinder on my Nook and hope to get to it soon. I hate it when the heroine is annoying, i just finished a book like that and unfortunately most of the book involved her so I had to stop myself from flinging my ereader across the room! LOL Great review…I’ll definitely be checking out this series. I’m a sucker for fairy tales with a twist!
Yeah, annoying MCs are no bueno. It’s the one time I really like multiple POV stories. Like George R.R. Martin’s books—Arya and Jon Snow totally got me through the Sansa. And flinging eReaders only ends in tears and recriminations LOL (this I know from experience).
I grabbed Cinder from the library today on audio. I’m going to start it on the way to work in the morning.
That is an excellent way to get through traffic. I really hope you like it.
You’ve got me really wanting to read this series (even more than I already did). And while 75% is a long time to be frustrated by a character, I’m also a FEELS at the end kind of rater. It’s just good to know that I’m going to have to deal with Cress for a while and not put her down too soon. Great review!
Thanks! And yeah, that’s my favorite thing about reviews/reviewing—the insider tips LOL. Hopefully someone out there won’t lose their mind with book 2 POV changes or give up with book 3 MC quirks 😉
Oh, interesting! I only skimmed your review for now because I haven’t had a chance to get to CRESS yet (my gosh, that book is monstrously long!), but I’m very excited to start soon. It’s good to be forewarned about Cress, though–I don’t think I’ve heard anyone else mention that they were annoyed with her, so it would have come as a shock after liking the last couple of Marissa Meyer heroines so much.
I’m so glad you still enjoyed it, though. And I know what you mean–I really like this series, but they’re 4 star books to me (so far), not quite 5. Though I’m stingy about my 5s anyway. Look forward to more Thorne and Wolf, however….
Wendy @ The Midnight Garden
Yeah, in a lot of the reviews that I’ve seen, readers seemed to be expecting Cress to be a lot like Disney’s Rapunzel (considering how rakishly Flynn-like Thorne is), and there’s nothing wrong with that—I LOVED Tangled. I just felt like parts of it were WAY over the top.
But overall, I still really liked it. I hope you do do!!