“You said yourself that the people of Luna need a revolutionary.” She lifted her chin, holding his gaze. “So I’m going to Luna, and I’m going to start a revolution.”

What did I think?

This is a new one for me, I don’t usually do reviews of whole series so this is a little bit trial and error. I couldn’t help but talk about this though as this series has blown me away (and maybe blown me into a bit of a book hangover, but we don’t talk about that). I’ve had The Lunar Chronicles on my TBR for a while because a) Marissa Meyer is one of my favourite authors and b) I am a sucker for a retelling. And a series that promised a sci-fi retelling of several fairytales, all wrapped up into one complex story? My dream! Aaaaand then I put it off forever because honestly? The size of Winter scared me, which is ironic considering I now wish Winter had never ended.

I alternated between reading my physical copies and listening to the audiobooks for this series, and I actually really liked both formats. The audiobooks for The Lunar Chronicles are excellently narrated and I really enjoyed all of the characterisations. I think Rebecca Soler did a fantastic job as narrator and it’s rebooted my love-hate relationship with audiobooks firmly back into the love category. I would have listened exclusively to the audiobooks if it wasn’t for the fact that I got so invested in the story I wanted to consume it faster.

The order I read in was: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Fairest, Winter and Stars Above. I didn’t really rate Stars Above, but Fairest (labelled book 3.5) is a must read in my opinion. Going into Winter knowing what I did about Queen Levana made it so much more powerful, particularly when she was being misleading about events that occurred in Fairest and I knew the truth. I really wish the characters in this book could have heard me yelling at them, it would have saved me a lot of heart-ache. If I was going to rate them by my favourites, I think it would be in reverse order: Winter, Fairest, Cress, Scarlet, Cinder. That bodes well for me, honestly, because I’m impressed by any author that manages to improve a series without fail book by book.

The characters in this are blisteringly heterosexual. They are. I’m not going to beat around it because we all know that I love my queer books more than anything else. But. But. I did end up rooting for all of our couples throughout the series, so I can’t complain too much. Jacin and Winter? Loves of my life. Cress and Thorne? SHEER PERFECTION. I probably would have loved Scarlet and Wolf just as much if the Alpha thing didn’t send me into hysterics every time – I’m sorry Marissa Meyer, I’ve been permanently traumatised by too much bad fanfiction.

The way the plots develop across the entire series is phenomenal. Each book had its own important plot points but the way they threaded together across the entire series made for an overarching story that managed not to drop any threads. I found the same thing with the Renegades series and I am actually in awe of Marissa Meyer’s tightly plotted stories. Plot holes, who? The world-building is equally interesting and I adored the way that the fairytale aspects were threaded into the storyline in familiar but still interesting ways. They still managed to be unexpected, even though I’m super familiar with the stories, so I’m calling that a resounding success. The sci-fi/dystopia aspects were so good. I’m a sucker for sci-fi anyway, but there was something about this that I just loved. I think it was the huge depth in the world and the way that it felt like a really authentic world. I liked that hints were dropped about the history of the world so readers could piece it together without having a huge exposition dump. I could honestly read about this universe forever and though I’m super late to the party, I need all the merch immediately.

The characters are well developed and if you love found family vibes then this series is The One. I liked the way Marissa Meyer gave all the characters their own space to develop so it truly felt like we had a full cast of main characters and Cinder didn’t steal all the limelight. By the time I got to Winter I could feel my heart actually pounding whenever the whole crew were together because I just….. love them so much. I would actually really struggle to pick out my favourite characters so I just will not, thank you.

I can already see myself rereading this series endlessly, and if you haven’t picked it up yet then let me be the millionth person to tell you to do it!

About the books:

Book 1, Cinder:

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg.

She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

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Start the series with Cinder!

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