Winter by Marissa Meyer

Summary from Goodreads:

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend—the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

Review:

What a fun series! I have loved these books since Cinder first came out. I love fairytale retellings and there is just something so, so cool about a cyborg Cinderella.

Winter is probably my least favorite of the heroines. She doesn’t have the bravery of Cinder, the sass of Scarlet, or the intelligence of Cress. That being said, she is such an admirable character. She’s the only Lunar, that I know of, who point-blank refuses to use her gift of mind control. She’s thinks it’s wrong to control people that way. And because of her convictions is slightly mad. She hallucinates a lot.

She’s also insanely beautiful. No one believes she’s not manipulating her looks. And she’s so pretty and sweet that she wins over so many people so easily. I guess that’s part of my issue with her. She gets things a little too easily for my liking. And she does kind of need to be saved/taken care of a lot. However, I do admire her and find her interesting. She’s kind of like a sci-fi princess, less tough version of Luna from Harry Potter. She’s kind of crazy, but still so wise.

I loved this take on the Snow White story too. I was wondering how they’d handle the dwarves and the sleeping in the casket element to the story. I was not expecting what I got. It was so cool how these elements were handled. So cool.

And let’s face it. This book was about the revolution. It was about taking back the moon, getting revenge on Queen Levana, and saving the world from evil domination. It’s the culmination of all the other books. All of the other books focused on different aspects of Queen Levana’s terribleness: her mind control, her need of domination, her treatment of Lunars without the gift (shells), her mutated super soldiers, her engineered plague and timely cure, her power, etc. And finally, all these super hero fairy tale characters have their shot at putting an end to it all.

If there is one thing Meyer has down, it’s her characters. Reading this felt like meeting up with old friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Seriously, I love Cinder and Scarlet and Cress like friends. Also, the boys are pretty amazing too. I love the roll reversal with Cinder and Prince Kai. Prince Kai is trapped in the castle, getting married off and imprisoned in his tower, while Cinder is off starting a revolution.

I loved the point of view switches in this one. The characters never seemed to all be together at the same time. The reunions and the side missions made it all worth it. Everyone had a part to play. No part was too small.

The revolution aspect of the story did seem a little rushed and I’m not sure the planning of it all made enough sense for me to have it work as successfully as it did. Pretty much, there was no planning at all, and a lot of luck. A lot was dependent on Cress’s tech abilities and no one seemed to plan for Cress being separated from the group at all. And the final battle felt a little too Disney (aka: The beast and Gaston or Simba and Scar) for me.

All in all, this book was a lot of fun. I absolutely love the characters. I love this take on the classic fairytale. I love the action. And I love the end and how all the pieces fit together. I was not a fan of the revolution and final fight scenes, but that’s okay. It didn’t hinder my love for the book or the series as a whole. I give this one a 9/10.