Title: Cress
Author:  Marissa Meyer
Publisher/Year:  Feiwel & Friends  2/4/14
Length: 560 Pages
Series: Lunar Chronicles #3

Overview

In this third book in Marissa Meyer’s bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, 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 prevent her army from invading Earth.

Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl trapped 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 being forced to work for Queen Levana, and she’s just received orders to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is splintered. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a higher price than she’d ever expected. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai, especially the cyborg mechanic. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.

My Thoughts

I’ve totally drunk the kool-aid with this series, and i have to say that the style that Ms. Meyer writes is among my favorites.  Not only are we really engaged with the story, there are several parallel plots to follow that really make things interesting.

We have picked up in the series when the motley crew of allies have found themselves in an interesting place.  Cinder and Thorne are still wanted, as are Dr Erland.  Cress (the girl that had made the D-comm connection to Cinder) is still living in her satellite under the control of Sybil, and Scarlet and Wolf find themselves in an interesting and complicated relationship.

This story really takes us on a few different roller coasters.  Not only are there branches that are solely supporting the over-arching story of the Lunar attempt to rule not only their own world but Earth as well, but there are budding romances all over the place.  In addition to that, there’s the continued question on who you can trust, if you should be trusting them for the right reason, and well….do we really want to trust them?

So where book 1 centered mostly in New Bejiing, Book 2 in France, Book 3 spends quite a bit of time in Africa.  We begin to learn a lot more about Lunars in the sense that maybe there are more of them on Earth than people knew and not all of them are as bad as rumors have led folks to believe.

We also continue on the journey of discovering what it is that Dr Erland was and is working on and what his motivation is.  There’s definitely something about the doctor that makes me wonder more and more of his ties to various story lines.

All while that is going on, we see relationship change – grow together, get torn apart, and well, there’s actually a bit of humor in it all.

From Scarlet, we saw the development of something with Scarlet and Wolf and we see where that duo goes.  It’s definitely a challenge there given that Wolf is a Lunar special ops agent, so complicated is an understatement.  Not only that – but they both end up under some level of control and influence of the enemy, and this is something that may not be quickly resolved.

We also get to see something develop from Cress’s crush that she set out with for Captain Thorne.  At first it was just based on Netfeeds, but as she finds herself spending more time with him and relying on him for so much more, well that crush evolves.  The issue of course is that no one knows who will survive, and who will be ripped from their closest person, and this is something that Thorne is clear about. He’s also very clear about how he wants Cress to interpret things with him – it’s nothing more than just being on the same side of the fight.

We’ve come to love Iko in the other books and this installment is no different.  She continues to bring a levity to things that is needed at times, and proves to be quite valuable yet again.  There are times that i wonder what would happen without the humor that she brings.

Then there’s the big ‘what if’ between Cinder and Kai, especially since it’s just hours until his wedding to Queen Levana.  I mean, we all know that they have something for the other, even if it’s just a fleeting infatuation, but i think that we’ll get to see a lot more of that in the next installment, at least i hope.

So,  where we’re left off is definitely not closure – so if you were thinking that this may be a trilogy – have no worries here.  There’s no chance of things getting resolved, and quite a few more questions to be answered.  I for one am still curious as to how things will end up, who will still be alive since death keeps following Cinder and her friends.

Honestly, the one thing that’s really bumming me out right now is that #4, Winter isn’t slated to come out until 2015.  I don’t know how I’m going to wait that long for it.  So…anyone listening out there, if you can get me an ARC, i will be forever indebted to you.  For those of you who are new to the series – really give it a chance – i like it for the complexity and for the shear volume of story lines that are interwoven quite seamlessly.  Enjoy – really…..Enjoy.