[R] Fairest, by: Marissa Meyer

Fairest
(Lunar Chronicles)
by: Marissa Meyer

★★★★★

In this stunning bridge book between Cress and Winter in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana’s story is finally told.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her “glamour” to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story – a story that has never been told . . . until now.

Marissa Meyer spins yet another unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit and death. This extraordinary book includes full-color art and an excerpt from Winter, the next book in the Lunar Chronicles series.

my thoughts

Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of them all?

Is Queen Levana is the fairest of all, then damn everybody else in the story, right? This book was a very very good insight in Levana's mind and back story. I love every bit of it, but its kind of hard to love something / someone you hate so much, right?

"She didn't want to be Channary. She didn't want her beauty, not if it came with her cruelty and selfishness as well."

I couldn't believe what I was reading in the first chapters. Levana was good, in her core. But I could say everything change after the accident, in which lead to Levana to use glamour forever and always. In the first chapters, I couldn't believe who the real villain was, Channary. I didn't actually remember what people said about her in the other books, but I thought I remembered someone telling that she was a good queen. That must be false after reading this book. Also I thought that she was married and died in the same accident everyone thought her child had died. Why did I have so many false events in my mind? No clue.

"Come here, baby sister," she whispered, and despite the terror twisting inside Levana's stomach, her feet obeyed. "I want to show you something."

Basically, the story goes this way. Channary and Levana's parents were killed by a shell (someone without glamour power), and the first child was going to take the crown, Channary. After three days of mourning, she became queen and a very irresponsible, Channary wasn't concernec with everything that was happening in Luna and she only was concerned in who was going to warm her bed at night. Then Channary became pregnant and not even her knew who the father was. After she gave birth to a lovely girl called Selene, she became sick and died of some lungs desease. So Levana became queen until the real sucessor, Selene, turn 13. After some time, Levana wanted to be the real queen and not pass the crown to a child, so she plot a plan against Selene. Killing her was the best option.

"The guilt and the horror and the memory of that awful smell might stay with her forever, but she was the queen."

After killing and becoming queen, there was only want more thing she needed. Earth. Luna was basically dying little by little because living on a rock wasn't giving them much resources. To obtain Earth she planned to marry a king over there and bit by bit obtain territories. That was not the only plan, the lemutosis was the other option. But first, she must dispatch her current husband, right? And she would do it, no matter how many times her heart shattered... and she did. Now there was only the Earth to conquer.

"Love is a conquest. Love is a war. Here is what I think of love."

I was very excited to read this book, but mostly to know from where Winter came from. So here is a good description of her:

"Princess Winter was growing up to be as beautiful as a love-sung lullaby. Her skin, a few shades lighter than Evret's was velvet soft. Her hair had grown into thick curls, tight as springs and glossy as high-polished ebony wood. She had her mother's eyes, caramel, but with flecks of gray and emerald taken from her father."

Of course that Levana would hate her.

"Levana knew that this would benefit her someday. Her stepdaughter would be an ideal bargaining chip should the need for an alliance arise. And yet, the first time she overheard talk of how the princess might someday be even more fair to look on than the queen herself, Levana's thoughts had surged with hatred."

If you read the other books of the Lunar Chronicles, you should definitely read this book. It would make much much sense to all of you, I assure you. Plus you will love to hate Levana like no other villain in a book ever.