Review: Fairest

Fairest (Lunar Chronicles #3.5)
by Marissa Meyer
YA Fantasy
Amazon  /  Goodreads

Plot Summary:

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.

Review:

As much as I wanted to read Winter right after I finished Cress, reading about Levana's backstory was very interesting, and did help flesh out the world of the Lunar Chronicles much more.  It's hard to think that Levana from what we have come to know about her in the previous three books, could be in any way sympathetic, but the author does give that to her in Fairest.  But, it's still true to the character we have seen now, because Levana is not a complete innocent, and her skewed morality becomes increasingly off-kilter as the story proceeds.  It's a fascinating character study, and a completely believable origin story for a villain.

Fairest also introduces a character I absolutely loved - Evret Hayle.  Of course Levana also loved him, and that love was not conducive to his health at all.  I thought that slow downward spiral into which Levana's obsession takes her life as well as his, was just so well written, and ultimately tragic because it did seem that Levana and Evret had good intentions.  It just went so wrong.  Evret was a wonderful character though - so honorable, noble and kind.  Despite what Levana puts him through.

This is a short story, but so much detail was packed into it - finding out more about Levana's family, about what happened that led to Cinder's story in the first book, and about how Winter must have grown up, just made this series richer, and I'm sure will make the last book an even better reading experience.