Blog Review: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2)

Marissa Meyer

Review of Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1)

Publication Date: February 5th 2013

Publisher: Feiwel and Friends

Pages: 452

Genre:  Fairy Tale, Scifi, Romance, Young Adult

Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She's trying to break out of prison--even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive. Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Scarlet is a much more dramatic and darker tale than its prequel, Cinder, but considering that story it comes from (Little Red Riding Hood) I feel like that's harder to avoid. There's something about this specific fairy tale that inspires darkness. The book follows two storylines for the most part (with bits from Kai's point of view). We have the continuation of the last book's plot with Cinder's escape, and then we have the introduction of our new heroine, Scarlet.

What I absolutely love about Meyer's writing style, is how strong her characters are. They have very distinct personalities, they are not flaky things that we can imprint our own selves on to, instead they have such personalities that if we met them in real life we could recognize them.

Focusing in on Scarlet's story, we have a girl whose grandmother has disappeared, yet no one will take the disappearance seriously (everyone considered her crazy and thinks she just ran off). When she gets a hint to where her grandmother may have gone/been taken, she starts off, ending up getting help from a stranger named Wolf. However she doesn't know if she can trust him or not.

Do you notice something about this summary? I certainly noticed it while I was reading the book. Meyer has not just taken the basic story of a girl in a red hood and a wolf, this is the fairy tale, with every bit Meyer could fit in from the original tale stuck in somewhere. I was duly impressed. I think Meyer has a gift for interpretation that I have not seen done better by many other writer of fairy tales. The ideas she comes up with are incredibly unique, yet they perfectly represent what they're supposed to in the original story (I mean Cinder's foot falling off instead of a shoe? Brilliant.) And, it's all done naturally.

Now all my gushing praise aside, it is true that I didn't enjoy this book as much as Cinder, however I think that is less Meyer's fault and more a personal preference. Scarlet has a slightly different feel to it. The main character is slightly older, the situations a bit more, and Wolf is much more... dramatic that Prince Kai.

The beginning also didn't catch my interest and it was slow reading for a while. If I didn't have the parts with Cinder to follow, I don't know if I'd ever gotten past that point where suddenly I was hooked.

Okay, so I love that Scarlet is the one who initiates the first kiss Wolf (not even for sure if he likes her or not, but because she wants to). I love that she just takes does it. So rarely in Young Adult or New Adult fiction is the female protagonist shown as taking the lead in the romance, as making the first move. I myself don't have the confidence or natural inclination to make a move, but I have friends who do and it was nice reading something that didn't conform to what the world tries to make us think is the norm.

I think my favourite interpreted bit in this book is hands down the Lunar twisting Scarlet's mind to see the Omega as her Grandmother, thus representing the wolf in the grandmother's clothing. It's so smooth and natural that I didn't even realize that it was a bit from the fairy tale until I was going through it again!

The Lunar Chronicles stick out among fairy tales. I think it's obvious what a success they are, when a new book comes out all the blogs are reviewing it. But, there is a reason for the hype, they are written well, they are written creatively, and they are unique takes..

4.5 Bookmarks