It’s been a rough week here, I keep looking around for or reaching over to pet the dog and she’s not there. The absolute worst
I haven’t gotten much reading done but have been listening to an audio while I can’t sleep. Eventually I will finish Winter.
Fairest is the first book I read in 2022, the shorter Lunar Chronicles book that falls in between Cress and Winter. I absolutely 100% recommend reading Fairest in that order with the rest of the series, as it gives a lot of background into Levana’s story, what happened to Cinder, the story with Winter and Jacin, the plague origins, and so many other things.
Bookish Quick Facts:
- Title: Fairest
- Series: The Lunar Chronicles 3.5
- Author: Marissa Meyer
- Publisher & Release: Feiwel & Friends, January 2015
- Length: 226 pages
- Rate & Recommend: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 yes for anyone reading the series
Here is the synopsis:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall.
Who is the Fairest of them all?Pure evil has a name, hides behind a mask of deceit, and uses her “glamour” to gain power. But who is Queen Levana? Long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress in The Lunar Chronicles, Levana lived a very different story―a story that has never been told . . . until now.
New York Times –bestselling author Marissa Meyer reveals the story behind her fascinating villain in Fairest, an unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit and death
I think this provided a lot of the insight I was looking for into the Lunar world. What is life like for the royalty, what are their expectations, what is society like, etc.
Levana iss more than a bit crazy as an adult and I liked her backstory. Sbe was influenced by early mind control and torture by her older sister, Cinder’s mother, which damages the mind of young children. At least it was written that mind control is bad for the toddlers. Also she was probably a little psychotic to begin with, AND just had terrible influence from Channary all along
That said – I don’t think this book was written to garner sympathy so much as tell the back story. Other than the initial incident and bullying from her sister, Levana made her own choices and did a lot of really sick and questionable things
She’s a heck of a villain, kind of reminds of Joker in that she is just completely criminally insane by the time Winter occurs
Meyer also answered questions I had – like – how does the queen have a black step daughter? What was under the glamour? Who was Cinder’s mom? What about the plague origins? Heck even about Sybil Meara and the Lunar court.
I would love to know why Channary was as rotten as she was, but there were a few allusions to how the girls grew up fairly unsupervised and all of the Lunar royalty and their children tend to be absolutely terrible. As evidenced by the 8 year old boy torturing Scarlet at the end of Cinder
I definitely think this is good to read in between Cress and Winter, because now we know about the queen and even Jacin, and everything makes a little more sense to me
It’s definitely enhancing the reading experience for me in book 4.
Quick notes on the audio: Rebecca Soler definitely gives another awesome performance here. She hasn’t missed a beat through 4 books now. From Macmillan audio, including the hour ish long preview of Winter, the length is 6h and 32 minutes. I loved how creepy and murderous she made Channary sound saying “Come heeeeere baby sister” and in contrast, how Levana had to deal with things. Definitely highly recommend as both a book or audio
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