Book Review: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Winter

by Marissa Meyer
Series: The Lunar Chronicles #4
Published: November 10, 2015
Genres: Fairy Tale, Retelling, Science Fiction, Young Adult
Format: eBook (827 pages)
Source: Purchased

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mark her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.
Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won't approve of her feelings for her childhood friend--the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn't as weak as Levana believes her to be and she's been undermining her stepmother's wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that's been raging for far too long.
Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters? Fans will not want to miss this thrilling conclusion to Marissa Meyer's national bestselling Lunar Chronicles series.

Winter ended up being my favorite book in the whole series. Snow White is probably the hardest fairy tale character to connect to. She’s perfect and helpless. Winter spends a lot of time dusting, sweeping, cleaning rugs, organizing and washing laundry like Snow White does (but no forest animals in this version). But Winter pays such a high price for her goodness (literally going crazy) that I couldn’t help but admire her. She refuses to ever manipulate and control people even with “good” intentions because it’s never harmless. Making a fake happy life for someone is cruel in it’s own way. “For who am I to presume what is good for others? ( Location 3944)” In her place, I would have taken the easy way out and just controlled people’s minds and justified it. The fact that Winter refuses to do that shows a different kind of strength that was no less impressive because it wasn’t violent or physical. She ended up being my favorite character in the series. I loved how Cinder described her as quirky, caring, intelligent, humble but not ignorant (Location 4551). When we first meet Winter, it’s hard to tell what is real and what is hallucination. It made me connect with her immediately. And her connection and relationship with Jacin was beautiful. I could see why they loved each other and how they helped each other. They are my favorite couple by a mile in the whole series.

I didn’t know how Marissa Meyer was going to pull off the fairy tale connections but of course she did in the most clever ways. When Jacin asked for his knife back, I knew immediately that he was going to have to use it on Winter but even that scene didn’t go exactly like I expected. Cinder and her friends tell Winter not to leave or let anyone in. I chuckled when I realized that meant all of them were kind of like dwarves in that moment. The queen is obsessed with looks and with the people loving her. The queen is convinced that everything she’s done is for the good of the people and they are ungrateful and only love Winter because she is pretty. Then she accuses Winter of all the things she herself has done – conniving and manipulation. It’s all such excellent villain motivation and I loved it. There’s a glass tank and a kiss and even a “poisoned” apple. I’m still impressed with how much you could still see the fairy tale in this sci-fi world.

I loved the sarcastic humor. So much sarcastic goodness going on. From Jacin joking about the city’s solid foundation of “brainwashing and manipulation (Location 918)” to Scarlet’s comment on Cinder’s speech lacking in strategy and Iko’s relief that someone else noticed that, too. The most ironic humor was Cinder getting all the intel they needed from the queen’s propaganda.

I liked the development of Wolf’s character and the discussion of animal instincts and how instincts are not always violent. They can be protective, loving, and playful. I wouldn’t say I like Wolf, but I felt like I understood him by the end – even as Frankenstein Wolf.

I kind of wondered why the device that Jacin brought up to the Queen and the one Cinder thought Iko might have something to do with didn’t come up sooner, though. There was a lot of mind manipulation going on in the battle and something like that device would have been real handy. I couldn’t help but wonder why they wouldn’t develop either a weapon or a defense of some kind before going into such a one sided battle. They jumped in a little unprepared.

I liked the politics and the plot. Cinder talks about mercy and fair trials because killing “bad” guys just leads to more tyranny and mistrust. That was a powerful moment.

I loved this book so much. I’ll end my review with my favorite quote from the book:

“Broken isn’t the same as unfixable. (Location 6884)”

Book Review of Winter on a Post-it

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