Title: Cress Series: Lunar Chronicles #3
Author: Marissa Meyer
Published: February 4, 2014
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Page Count: 552
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they're plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.
Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she's just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.
When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a higher price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.
This is one of those situations where I can understand and agree with the appeal other readers see in a particular book, but at the same time, I don’t, objectively, think the same book is actually very well-done. It’s an interesting situation. Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles are massively, almost universally popular; Cress is probably the best-loved book in the entire series so far. While I was reading, I could see what others loved about the book, but I also saw a multitude of flaws and weaknesses.
Mostly, I just think that Cress isn’t as polished as it could be. There are numerous aspects about the book that seem amateurish or immature to me, things that made it seem as if Meyer were an author just starting out, rather than a huge bestseller with three books already under her belt. For me, the book just didn’t feel together in the way that a truly great book should. I grant that it’s entertaining, but that’s not always the only thing that matters.
The first issue here is that Meyer has stretched herself too far. Each book in the series adds another female protagonist to the mix, another romantic couple, another set of POVs to juggle. It was too much. Because of all the constant perspective-switching and all the backstory to relate, it took forever for anything to happen, and even then, I felt like the book had way too much ground to cover. The narrative began to feel clunky, rotating between Cress, Scarlet, Cinder, the doctor, Iko, Kai, etc.
And with so many characters, it’s hard to establish good character development. In Cress, I felt like everyone was hopelessly two-dimensional. Cress is presented as a damsel-in-distress who (and I quote) “shrivels” into Thorne constantly because she’s always in need of saving. I don’t like shriveling protagonists. Cinder and Scarlet, who we’ve met before, are completely nondescript. I’ve complained before that I can’t actually differentiate Cinder and Scarlet’s characters because they’re essentially the same person, as presented by the text—the chapters from each girl’s perspective read very much the same as the other’s. And one would think that Cinder, whom the reader has known for three novels now, would show definite progress and development. She doesn’t. I don’t even know who she is, or who Scarlet is, because Meyer’s characterization is just so shallow.
In general, I find Meyer’s writing to be pretty weak and juvenile, in areas not related to characterization. She has all these point of view characters, and they all sound exactly the same to me, which makes the story very confusing. One thing I noticed in Cress is how Meyer refused to use “swear words” at all, so instead we have a very clean, almost childish story. It felt very off to me, and though I suppose it adds to the fairytale feel, it also doesn’t feel realistic, using silly placeholders instead of actually curse words. Small thing maybe, but it really affected how I viewed the maturity of the prose.
As far as plot goes…there wasn’t much of one. Most of the book is about the characters sitting around or dealing with sideplots instead of actually working toward the central conflict, which is, of course, to overthrow the evil Queen Levana. It wasn’t until the last fourth of the book or so that anything actually happened, which is really quite distressing. It should not take a book as long to get going as it took Cress. This book is most definitely a filler book, leading into the finale. I understand that some groundwork had to be laid, but…it does affect my enjoyment, knowing that everyone I’m reading is a bridge to a future story, not a story on its own merit. I will say, though, that when this book started in with a real plot, it was very enjoyable, which doesn’t really make up for the beginning’s lack of engagingness.
Cress is…okay. Just okay. It’s entertaining in spots, but an objective look at the text reveals a lot of weak spots and dull moments. I personally think Meyer’s writing was shallow and clunky, which resulted in a shallow and clunky story. It definitely wasn’t awful, but there were some problems.
