Review: Fairest by Marissa Meyer

Fairest

Marissa Meyer

(The Lunar Chronicles #3.5)

Publication Date: January 27, 2015

Hardcover, 220 pages, Feiwel and Friends

Genres: YA, Dystopian, Sci-Fi

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In this stunning bridge book between Cress and Winter in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana’s story is finally told.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her “glamour” to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story – a story that has never been told . . . until now.

Marissa Meyer spins yet another unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit and death. This extraordinary book includes full-color art and an excerpt from Winter, the next book in the Lunar Chronicles series.

My Review

Everyone and their mother has probably read this book already, but I’m going to talk about it anyway.

As some of you may know, I very much enjoy The Lunar Chronicles. Marissa Meyer has done a fabulous job creating dynamic and fascinating characters who all still fit into the mold of the fairytale retellings they stem from.

That being said, Fairest isn’t really a book that I’d recommend to someone. Don’t get me wrong, I’d definitely tell them to read the original series and then read this one in order to understand the happenings in Winter. (I’m not sure about this part since I haven’t read it yet.) But if Fairest was a standalone with no ties to the other books, I wouldn’t tell someone to read Fairest because “it was that good.” To be honest, it was actually creepy and horrifying. Levana does some despicable things in this book. She forces someone to desire her and then forces him to do other things, and she kills people all to further her political agenda. She’s a terrible person.

I think Marissa wanted the readers to kind of feel a wee bit sorry for Levana, but I only felt so when Levana’s sister and the terrible thing that she had done was mentioned.

All in all, I’m super glad that this story was short. Levana is not a character I want to read about—through her thoughts and/or actions—on a daily (or even a yearly) basis. The background information is probably going to be very helpful in the last book, but I still shudder when I think of what she has done. I guess Marissa did her job well then, because she wrote a story that creeped me out so very much, and, if she also wanted to show how diabolical this character can be, she succeeded by a mile.

*Note: I purchased a copy of this book for myself. This in no way affected my opinion/review.