weekend read: Cinder, the Lunar Chronicles series

Oh.

How I love thee, young adult dystopian series. HOW I LOVE THEE.

To save time, I’m going to talk about the whole Lunar Chronicles series written by Marissa Meyer. Cinder is the one I have pictured below, but I read the whole four-book series and loved every single minute of it.

First off, I should share that my friend, Ashley told me to read Cinder a few years ago and I said it looked like something I wouldn’t like because it was based on fairy tales and that’s really not my thing. But when we were in Washington, DC last year, I decided I didn’t want to read any of the books I had packed so I started reading Cinder on my Kindle app.

The story revolved around main character, Cinder, a cyborg living in New Beijing sometime in the future. Our world is mostly peaceful, except the Lunar colonies on the moon are a huge threat to earth because of their tyrannical leader, Levana. Basically, she wants to take over the world. Don’t we all, Levana?

I feel like I can’t adequately express how awesome these books are. I often forgot while reading them that Cinder was based loosely on Cinderella, the second book Scarlet was from Little Red Riding Hood, book number three, Cress, was about Rapunzel, and the last book, Winter was based on Snow White. But think more original fairy tales than Disney ones.

Because these books are wicked fun, violent, and all about smart females that save the world. I can’t wait for my daughters to be old enough to read them. I imagine at some point, these will be made into movies. I don’t think I can talk bad about books that show girls as gifted mechanics and computer wizards, girls that run farms or don’t use their beauty as an excuse to be unkind.

I’m sure there are other people that can give better summaries of these books. They’re long–each one was over 800 pages–but they are so enjoyable that you don’t even realize the length. There’s a love story for each character, but the reader never gets the feeling that the girl would be nothing without her love interest. They’re fun story lines, but the girls do all the hard work.

The Lunar Chronicle series: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter. Make sure you have a vacation or some down time planned so you can dig in and lose yourself in the story. They’re just fun.