Review: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Book: Scarlet, Marissa Meyer

Series: The Lunar Chronicles series #2

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Release Date: February 5^th, 2013

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.

Rating: 5 stars

When I first read this and discovered that it was going to be from Scarlet’s perspective, I first rebelled against it. I don’t care about some girl from France! I want to know what happened to Cinder! But then, after reading about Scarlet’s life, I soon fell in love with her as much as I did with Cinder. She and Cinder are so alike, and yet so different. They both have independent attitudes and fight back when they need to, but Cinder is still more reserved than Scarlet about reigning in her temper; Scarlet wouldn’t think twice about issuing a violent outburst if she felt the situation needed it.

Meyer totally nailed the combination of fairy tales and dystopia. You wouldn’t expect to get much leverage out of a fairy tale like Red Riding Hood, but Meyer did it! She uses all the elements of the tale to wield together some super characters and a terrific story.

Scarlet takes place just after Cinder left off, with Cinder attempting to escape prison and find Dr. Erland so she can learn more about her destiny as the true heir of Luna. But we get introduced to the new character, Scarlet, who is trying to find her missing grandmother, who was abducted. However both their tales intertwine with each other very nicely. There was no repeating of scenes and it was refreshing to see some characters from fresh, unbiased eyes.

We are introduced to a lot of new characters in this book.  As well as Scarlet, we are introduced to Thorne, another escaped convict that accompanies Cinder in her escape as he has a spaceship she can use. He’s arrogant and overconfident and yet you can’t help but love him because he’s such a likable character. Despite his arrogance, he’s a genuinely nice dude and has all good intentions. There’s also Wolf, a man harbouring a secret who helps Scarlet track down her grandmother. Wolf is a very complex character. At first you think he’s the bad guy, but then he wants to help Scarlet, but then makes a few poor choices along the way which make you question his motives. However, the mysteriousness surrounding his character makes him all the more endearing.

Scarlet was a great character. She doesn’t sit back and let life pass her by (like Cinder did); she takes action. When the police gave up their search of her grandmother, Scarlet put on her red hoodie and took the situation in her own hands, doing whatever she had to in order to save her grandmother. She’s imperfectly perfect: she does what she has to yet tends to overreact and lose her temper quite easily.

We learn a lot more about Cinder’s past and what it took to get her to Earth and how she became cyborg. We also learn about the people who helped her escape and we learn just how much is riding on her taking her rightful place as queen.

In all, this book was not as good as Cinder, but still good and I would definitely recommend it. It’s a great twist on some of your childhood fairy tales and makes it feel like your reading something new all over again, which is refreshing.