Words on Cress by Marissa Meyer (The Lunar Chronicles #3)

Sci-fi Fantasy
Mar 20, 2015
6 min read

Earth is numb, shell-shocked by the violent and merciless Lunar attacks. To prevent any more slaughter, Emperor Kai has agreed to marry the Lunar Queen Levana and create a "peaceful" union between the two planets. Levana's getting the Commonwealth served to her on a silver platter, but she won't be content until Linh Cinder and her band of criminals is captured. Meanwhile, Kai searches for Princess Selene, the rightful heir to the Lunar throne. He knows that Cinder has found Selene and may even have the princess with her. Of course, that's not the only reason he hopes the cyborg stays out of the evil monarch's clutches.

Locked in her satellite since childhood with nothing but her netscreens for company, Cress, a Lunar shell, has become a talented hacker and has been given her orders from the Lunar queen herself: Find Cinder. Unknown to her superiors, however, Cress has been secretly helping shield Cinder from the many, many ships that are searching for her. Cress dreams of Earth and the day when she will be able to leave her prison and view the planet firsthand, rather than from the netscreens she shares her home with. She is offered an escape by the crew of the Rampion, Cinder's ship, and agrees. However, when the escape goes horribly wrong, the group is fractured.

Cress and Captain Thorne find themselves stranded in the middle of Africa, thrown out into the middle of the desert with no supplies or map. Wolf, Cinder, and Iko are left to search franticaly for their missing friends, and Scarlet is captured, taken back to Luna as a hostage.

Regardless of the group's current situation, one thing is clear: Levana must not gain control of th Eastern Commonwealth. Faced with a disaster, Cinder does what any reasonable person would do: She hatches a dangerous, crazy plan to crash Levana's wedding and prevent Kai from marrying her, willing or not.

For starters, the book is nice and thick. It's 550 pages and 62 long, not counting extras. Once again, I had to enjoy the awesome cover design.

But really though, the book was awesome. I saw a couple new characters, Including Cress. She's a dreamer, entertaining fantasies about Earth and reading stories about princes and damsels in distress, picturing her rescue. Of course, the world isn't really like that, so she gets a bit of a rude awakening. She's really cute in a way, mostly because she finds everything about Earth so beautiful. Cress has a strong sense of right and wrong, and I think her isolation may have left her very untarnished by the evil people around her. The Lunar hacker is adaptable, brave, kind, helpful, and cheerful. She always has a way to make the others, mostly Thorne, smile, and Cress is ready to help any way she can.

Second is another new character, Winter. I don't see very much of her in the book, and she's only in it for a section or two, but shem ade quite the impression! Winter, for those of you who don't remember, is Levana's stepdaughter and has a claim to the throne like Cinder. She's also going insane, which might give Cinder more of a chance at Lunar leadership. Winter is slowly but undoubtedly going crazy because she refuses to use her Lunar powers for an unknown reason. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to use it to lie or control people? Winter is lonely, mostly because her only friends are animals in the palace zoo.

Despite her insanity, she may actually be very insightful. In one part of the book, she tells Scarlet that the palace walls bleed and the hallways are covered in blood sometimes. Winter goes on to say that sometimes she gets blood on her shoes and then she's scared that the guards will come and find her, following the trail, but they never do. Winter says that she knows that she's going crazy because, well, wouldn't someone clean the blood up if it was real? I wonder if this is a metaphor: The palace isn't covered in real, tangible blood, but maybe the bood repersents the lies and brutality of the Lunar court that nobody is trying to fix, either because they're scared, they don't care, or they're part of it.

A third new character, Jacin, is a Lunar guard that Cinder and the others sort of pick up. He doesn's support Levana, so that sort of makes him allies with Cinder. Jacin is all work and no play, and he's often sort of empty. He doesn't often show emotions, which makes him kind of hard to get to know him as a character.

Plenty of the returning characters are great too. Cinder is willing to tackle anything, and she's very determined. Even with things like her plans to crash the royal wedding, which might not end well and will be very dangerous, she's all for it. She feels very realistic as a heroine. Cinder is still learning to use her Lunar powers, which helps her feel more real. She's really a normal girl thrown into a role she doesn't want. Cinder never wanted to have so much responsibility and so many people having such high hopes for her, but she has them anyways and is afraid to let everyone down and fail, which also helps her feel very relatable and real.

Iko is as awesome as ever. Cinder's android friend is very loyal to her, staying with her no matter what. She's fun and sunny, offering comedic relief even when she's not trying to be funny. The Lunar Chronicles deprived of Iko would be a very sad place, I think. She adds humor to the otherwise slightly dark story.

Kai is selfless, trying to do the best thing for his country despite the danger he might put himself in. He knows that marrying Queen Levana could be a grave mistake, and he has every right to think that she might murder him in his sleep so she can have sole control of the Commonwealth. Granted, he's very reluctant to do it. Kai hopes that Cinder doesn't get caught, and he's very obvious: It's cute how transparent he is when expressing any thoughts about the cyborg. Speaking of cyborgs, Kai starts to question laws that are unfair to cyborgs, wondering if they're not so great after all. As far as I know, this hasn't happened before, and I like him all the more for it. The emperor should see everyone as having equal value. Kai wants to find Princess Selene so that he can put her on the throne of Luna, and he comes closer and closer to the truth. He thinks that Cinder has Selene with her. You could say he's right, I guess. Dramatic irony right there.

I saw a lot of interesting development with Captain Thorne. The ex-solider is very gentle with Cress, not making any jokes at her expense and actually trying to be choose his words with care. Speaking of jokes, he can be very serious in a crisis, as I saw here. Out in the desert, trying to survive with zero supplies, he finally shuts up a bit. It was a first, and I really kind of liked this new side of him, although he still should make his wisecracks. He acts selfless in more than one example, giving Cress the majority of their water at his own expense. Thorne is also self-deprocating, insisting that he's no hero despite Cress's insistance. Nevertheless, I'd say that being so selfless is a smallish example of chivalry, wouldn't you say so?

I also saw some more devlopment with Dr. Erland. The doctor has made bad choices, but he's trying to set things right, mostly by helping Cinder as much as he can. I also learned that he was searching for a lost daughter, who he never saw when she grew up, and that he loves her deeply. Considering the fact that I don't think he has his wife anymore, his daughter might be all he has left. Erland is a little prickly/moody, using the old-men-are-grumpy stereotype.

I thought this was a good addition to the series. The new characters felt real and I loved them. Both new and old characters develped well, and I can't wait to read the next book! Cress also got me more interested in Levana, and I want to read Fairest to learn more about her past. I'm not sure she's as cold as everyone thinks. Or, well, at least she wasn't always this way, right? Nobody's born like that. Anyways, I loved the plot, and there was never a slow moment. 4/5 stars. There's only one more book in the series, Winter, and it comes out late this year. I can't wait!