Fairest (The Lunar Chronicles #3.5) by Marissa Meyer

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. 

My Thoughts:
So good. Sucked me in and I could not stop reading. Why is this labeled 3.5? It's long enough to be a stand-alone and doesn't fall between the 3rd and 4th books. If anything, it's a prequel. And that is my only beef with Fairest.

Meyer so effortlessly gets inside people's heads. Her characters all sound like individuals, dialogue sounds like real people, everyone is well-layered, has depth and meaningfulness and relatability. Seriously, Meyer's characterizations are flawless. Her writing is flawless. I can find nothing at fault here in this book whatsoever. It's beautiful and tragic.

I so pitied Levana. I so sympathized with her and her horrible upbringing and loneliness. Why did no one show her any kindness?

Enter Evert, who is equally tragic but not in an insane way like Levana. The only person to show Levana kindness, ever, was Evret. And for that he doomed himself.

Oh man, just--Everything was So Good! In a horrible, tragic, depressing way. I want to read more. I cannot wait for Winter to come out. I might just be hyperventilating. Come on, Winter! You're killing me, here!

GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Sexual Content: Moderate
Language: Mild (if any)
Violence: Moderate
Drugs/Alcohol: None

Kris's Mini Reviews

Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.

Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.

An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.

This book was ridiculously cute and sweet. I really enjoyed it, but it wasn't perfect.  

I thought Ceony was a fantastic character. She's got struggles and she'll tell you about them, sister. She's not happy about her apprenticeship, and she complains about it, but it never becomes annoying or distracting. 

I am pretty much in love with Emery Thane, so there's that. I really need an Emery Thane in my life to make me a paper dog. Or a paper fox. OR ALL OF THE PAPER THINGS. I loved the world and the magic and the rules and everything. I do wish that we could have followed Ceony through her magic school a little, maybe to understand more about the world. Getting thrown in where we did was a little jarring for a brief moment.

My complaints about this book: it was too short. It felt rushed in certain areas. The whole journey through the heart sequence got confusing and weird and needed help.  

But overall, I loved it. It was squeaky clean to boot. A++ would read again. 

A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway, from the best-selling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to flee their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that, as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's apartment, and inventing a new identity for herself - an identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. When Emily befriends a young homeless boy named Cameron, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But she still can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever - and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.

A story of loss, adventure, and the search for friendship in the wake of catastrophe, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is one of Chris Bohjalian's finest novels to date - breathtaking, wise, and utterly transporting.

Um, I LOVED this book. It sucked me in and spit me out. I could not stop reading to save my life.  

There are soooo many mature themes here - prostitution (underage), homelessness, major death incidents, and drug abuse. I was recovering from surgery when I read this book, and greatly enjoyed taking my Oxycontin along with the characters (though I took mine responsibly and it was prescribed to me, so there.) Definitely an adult book. No children allowed. 

The story was very interesting and very convincing. There was science to back up the issues, and the whole idea of the "incident" was enough to scare the pants off me.  

The characters were fascinating. I loved Emily so much, and I loved that she loved Cameron and tried so very hard to take care of him. My heart broke for her over and over again.  

The ending was very interesting. The chapters leading up to the ending were well done, and the ending itself was kind of... rude. Just because it's like YOU get to decide if Emily makes it or not. I'm leaning towards yes. But who knows? 

Anyway. Definitely recommend for those who enjoy survivalist type books, but only if you can handle mature themes.  

PS: I LOVED how Bohjalian worked Emily Dickinson in over and over throughout the book. It was my most favorite thing ever. 

Alexa Hollen is a fighter. Forced to disguise herself as a boy and serve in the king's army, Alex uses her quick wit and fierce sword-fighting skills to earn a spot on the elite prince's guard. But when a powerful sorcerer sneaks into the palace in the dead of night, even Alex, who is virtually unbeatable, can't prevent him from abducting her, her fellow guard and friend Rylan, and Prince Damian, taking them through the treacherous wilds of the jungle and deep into enemy territory.

The longer Alex is held captive with both Rylan and the prince, the more she realizes that she is not the only one who has been keeping dangerous secrets. And suddenly, after her own secret is revealed, Alex finds herself confronted with two men vying for her heart: the safe and steady Rylan, who has always cared for her, and the dark, intriguing Damian. With hidden foes lurking around every corner, is Alex strong enough to save herself and the kingdom she's sworn to protect?

Why wasn't this book around when I was a kid? I would have eaten this stuff up. 

I loved the characters. Sure, the love triangle was trite and made me roll my eyes more than once. But I loved Alexa. I loved that she was so strong and amazing (until it came to the boys and then she was all melty. Eye roll.) The action parts, though, those were awesome. Alexa's grief and struggles came alive and were all very real to me.  

I wouldn't recommend this book to younger teens as there are mature themes in it, including murder, other violence, and rape. These issues aren't solved within the book either - but they seem to be coming close to being solved by the end. The end is very hopeful and uplifting. I can only hope that Book 2 lives up to the un-put-downable-ness that was Defy. 

Kris's Mini Reviews

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

I decided to read this book because it sounds AWESOME but I was nervous about the content. Because I've heard that the show is pretty graphic, and I'm not really into that. 

Turns out the book is much more mild than the show. Sure, there's blood and sex and trauma, but surprisingly, this book is more mild than some other fantasy books I've read (I'm looking at you, Terry Goodkind/Sword of Truth.)  

The action is engrossing enough to keep you occupied throughout this massive novel. I got pretty frustrated with the chapters switching character POVs all the time. There's a LOT going on, and it does get tough to keep all the characters straight. But each chapter rewards you with more intrigue, action, etc. I'm VERY impressed with George RR Martin's writing ability. It's obvious his worldbuilding is super detailed and thought out. I'm just kind of in awe at the world he created and kept straight and everything. Wow. 

So anyway, if you can handle blood, guts, and ... "manhood," I'd recommend this book to fantasy readers. Honestly, if I'd read it as a 13 year old, the sex stuff would have gone totally over my head. So it's not soft-core porn like I thought it was going to be (yikes!)

Bellman & Black is a heart-thumpingly perfect ghost story, beautifully and irresistibly written, its ratcheting tension exquisitely calibrated line by line. Its hero is William Bellman, who, as a boy of 11, killed a shiny black rook with a catapult, and who grew up to be someone, his neighbours think, who "could go to the good or the bad." And indeed, although William Bellman's life at first seems blessed—he has a happy marriage to a beautiful woman, becomes father to a brood of bright, strong children, and thrives in business—one by one, people around him die. And at each funeral, he is startled to see a strange man in black, smiling at him. At first, the dead are distant relatives, but eventually his own children die, and then his wife, leaving behind only one child, his favourite, Dora. Unhinged by grief, William gets drunk and stumbles to his wife's fresh grave—and who should be there waiting, but the smiling stranger in black. The stranger has a proposition for William—a mysterious business called "Bellman & Black" . . .

After reading The Thirteenth Tale, I was rabid for another book by Diane Setterfield. She took her sweet time crafting this one, so I figured it would be incredible and unputdownable and I was so excited. 

I was so disappointed. 

Don't get me wrong. I couldn't put the book down while I was reading it. Setterfield still writes beautifully and I love her prosetry. But the story behind this book bothered me. When I finished the book, I thought "well... what was the point of that?"  

It was a creepy (good) read for October, but it was nowhere near the level of awesomeness that I found from The Thirteenth Tale. And that is a bummer. 

An extraordinary novel about a wife who disguises herself as a man and goes off to fight in the Civil War.

She calls herself Ash, but that's not her real name. She is a farmer's faithful wife, but she has left her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War. Neverhome tells the harrowing story of Ash Thompson during the battle for the South. Through bloodshed and hysteria and heartbreak, she becomes a hero, a folk legend, a madwoman and a traitor to the American cause.

Laird Hunt's dazzling new novel throws a light on the adventurous women who chose to fight instead of stay behind. It is also a mystery story: why did Ash leave and her husband stay? Why can she not return? What will she have to go through to make it back home?

In gorgeous prose, Hunt's rebellious young heroine fights her way through history, and back home to her husband, and finally into our hearts. 

I was reeeeeally digging this book, until the last 10 pages or so. Then things kind of exploded all over and the ending was whack, man. Totes whack.  

Things I Loved: The voice. Hunt NAILED "Gallant Ash"'s voice. It was fantastic. I also loved the whole story arc, minus the ending and one other part. The plot, the pacing, the everything. A++ super yes. 

Things I Did Not Love: The weird relationship with Neva Thatcher. Did we really need to have an odd bisexual moment? Not so much. It pulled me right out of the story and distracted me the whole time Neva was around, even though there was nothing graphic or anything. It just did not work for me.  

Also, the ending. I don't know if I missed something or just felt betrayed by the suddenness of the narrator becoming unreliable...? Or maybe I'm just weird and that didn't happen? Don't know. Didn't love it. 

So, three stars. This book doesn't suck, but it's not my favorite.