Book #78: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Okay, this was a LOOOOONG BOOK. And it FELT long too. Cinder, the first book in this series, was only eight hours long on audiobook--and this one was 21. Twenty-one hours. I was kind of tired of it even before I started. But I finally got the e-book and was able to speed up the process by reading it and listening to it in intervals and am finally done. This book is the conclusion of the four or five-book Lunar Chronicles, where all the characters from the earlier three books come together to take down the evil queen Levana and put Cinder on the throne of Luna to make her the queen, as the long-lost princess of Luna. All the couples from each of the books pair up and are happy together at the end. Everyone ends up happy in the end.

The title character of this book is Winter, whose story is based off Snow White (and Queen Levana is the evil stepmother). She is a Lunar princess who has refused to use her Lunar gift to manipulate people, which is driving her mad. Literally. She is having hallucinations and acting crazy, and the only person who understands her and can take care of her is her childhood friend Jacin, who only wants to protect her. The queen is overwhelmingly jealous of Winter because of her beauty and tries to have her killed--multiple times.

I felt invested in this book because I'd already read the other four. It was just so. long. I understand that she had to wrap up the whole overarching storyline and write about Winter too and it's hard to have a whole revolution in one book... but man. Also, I felt like it was hard to really care about the revolution, since we never really learned about or experienced what their lives were like--and most importantly, Cinder never did either. It's not like in the Hunger Games where Katniss lives this hard life for forever so she has really good reasons to hate President Snow. It was kind of unbelievable that she could just sweep in and take over with so little preparation and understanding of Luna. Also, I just could never get behind the Kai-Cinder relationship. There is just no reason why Kai would ever be interested in her; she doesn't really do anything interesting or defining, ever. BUT the other relationships, between Scarlet and Wolf, Cress and Thorne, and Winter and Jacin are more compelling. My favorite parts of this book were the Winter-Jacin chapters, following them and the Snow White retelling. All the same, I'm glad that I read it--and I'm glad to have finished it and to be able to move on.

This series was definitely not the highest quality. The writing wasn't terrible, but there were so many things that I had problems with in each story. But it got into me and I didn't want to stop reading it. If I had known how long it was going to be I may not have gone past the first book... but it was worth my while in audiobook listening while rocking Lucy to sleep for endless hours over the last month or so. So it works out.