Last week, I reviewed Cinder, the first book in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series. Today I’m going to talk about the second book, Scarlet. As with my other reviews of sequels, there will probably be spoilers for Cinder, so if you haven’t read Cinder go check out my spoiler-free review for Cinder right over here. Otherwise read on at your own peril.
The Lunar Chronicles has a really interesting format as a series. As I said last week, each book is a retelling of a different fairy tale. The first book is Cinderella, and the second book is Little Red Riding Hood. This means that the main character of the second book is Scarlet, not Cinder. We don’t just abandon Cinder though. She’s still part of the story, and she’s arguably still the main character of the series, but the focus of this book is Scarlet. I loved Cinder so much I was uncertain about this format the first time I read it, but it works really well, and it’s really impressive. Also, I love Scarlet.
Scarlet lives on a farm in southern France with her grandmother. At the same time that Cinder is making her dramatic debut at the Commonwealth’s ball, Scarlet’s grandmother goes missing. The police find no sign that she was kidnapped, but Scarlet is convinced that something has happened to her. Her grandmother wouldn’t just leave. And when Scarlet’s estranged father turns up with claims of being forced to torture himself in Scarlet’s grandmother’s presence to get her to give up some sort of information, Scarlet sets out to find her grandmother herself. She teams up with a strange newcomer in town, a street fighter named Wolf. Wolf has the same tattoo as the people who tortured Scarlet’s father. He says he was part of a gang in Paris but he left, and he agrees to help Scarlet find her grandmother.
Meanwhile, Cinder teams up with another prisoner, Carswell Thorne, and together they break out of New Beijing prison. Cinder does most of the work, actually. Thorne just tags along, but he does have a stolen space ship hidden away, and they go on the run together. Dr. Errland told Cinder to meet him in Africa, but she isn’t ready to accept her role as lost princess. She feels like she doesn’t know who she is and who she’s supposed to be. So she starts practicing her lunar gift, and she uses the information she learned from Kai’s android Nainsi and goes in search of Michelle Benoit, a woman in southern France who Nainsi thinks hid Cinder for years. Cinder thinks Michelle Benoit might have some answers for her. And Michelle Benoit is, you guessed it, Scarlet’s grandmother.
And finally, we follow Emperor Kai as he faces down Queen Levana over Cinder’s escape. Levana gives Kai three days to find Cinder, or she will. And she won’t be nice about it.
And of course everything comes together in a crazy awesome climax.
The first time I read this, I admit that I was kind of bored with Scarlet’s story in the beginning. I wanted to keep following Cinder. On this reread, I was kind of bored with the start of Cinder’s story. Especially once they get out of prison, it feels like a lot of nothing drama. Okay, I like Thorne a lot, especially since I know where his story is going next in Cress, and Iko as the space ship is just great. Cinder’s story is by no means bad—it’s actually really good—but it isn’t her best moment, certainly.
Scarlet, on the other hand, has a great story in this book. Scarlet is a fierce character, and she will do anything to find her grandmother. Also Scarlet and Wolf’s romance is just so adorable! Scarlet’s story follows Little Red Riding Hood a lot more closely than Cinder followed Cinderella, though, so that makes things pretty obvious to everyone but Scarlet, which is a bit unfortunate. She probably has the weakest arc of any of the four main characters who have a book, but I also love her character so much that I don’t care. Like yes Scarlet might be the weakest of the series, but it’s still a really good book.
The other thing I love about this book is how much the international and interplanetary politics ramp up in this book. We see a lot of that from Kai’s point of view, and it’s great to watch him try to navigate this world that he’s really just been thrown into. It’s also great to watch his conflicting emotions about wanting Cinder to get caught so Levana doesn’t declare war but also wanting her to escape because she doesn’t want her to be executed.
I don’t want to say much more than what I’ve already said, because I don’t want to give anything major away. You really just have to go with these characters on this great journey. This is a really great second book in this series. This is one of those series where each book is just as good, if not better, than the last, and the series just builds and builds. It’s so intense but also so fun and adorable. I actually started screaming when I finished this book, because the ending is so crazy.
As I’ve said before, The Lunar Chronicles is one of my favorite series of all time. If you’ve read Cinder and you’re hesitating about going on to read Scarlet, you need to do it. Read it now. If you haven’t read Cinder, I don’t know why you’ve read this far in this review honestly, but you should go do that and then read Scarlet. It is great.