"Winter" by Marissa Meyer

I haven't the faintest idea how to start this review.

We finally go to the moon, in this the final book of a series called the Lunar Chronicles. Though, granted, the "Lunar" part is actually referring to the people who live on the moon. And the people who used to live on the moon, but have moved to Earth because the queen of the moon is a tyrant.

Our Snow White character, Queen Levana's stepdaughter Princess Winter, is insane. Apparently this is what happens if Lunars go too long without using their glamour. (I don't know if I ever mentioned the glamour, actually. Lunars have this thing called glamour, which supposedly works by manipulating bioelectricity or something, and which they can use to change their appearance and/or mind-control people.)

Everyone gets their moment to shine in this book, even Prince/Emperor Kai (our Cinderella prince), who hasn't really had much to do for the entire series. If you don't count the prequel and the short story collection, this is the final book, so all the principals getting to do something cool and cap off their plot threads is only right and proper.

The Evil Queen (Queen Levana) has a very tragic backstory. It's a bit of an explanation for her evilness, but it isn't used as an excuse; whatever made her this way, she's still evil, not just misunderstood. I appreciated that, because it often seems like "tragic villain" and "actually legitimately evil villain" are mutually exclusive in a lot of writing.

We get to see the Lunar aristocracy (and Prince/Emperor Kai has to deal with them), and they are exactly as shallow and vapid and vain as one might expect.

I really liked how they did the poisoned apple in this retelling.

It's pretty clear to me that the author had the entire series basically planned out before she wrote the first one. Each book retells a different fairy tale, but bits of setup for each of them are woven throughout the previous ones.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for sci-fi violence and some sexual references. Also child abuse as part of some backstories. Marissa Meyer managed to go the entire series without descending into lameness or ideology shoehorning (I'm looking at you, Shannon Messenger and Keeper of the Lost Cities), so some extra kudos to her for that.

4 stars. The whole of this series is greater than the sum of its parts, because I'd probably give the series 5 if I did overall series ratings. Maybe I should start doing that.

This has been my second of two contributions to We Love Fairy Tales Week, hosted at Hamlette's Soliloquy.

(Endnote: Winter's skin is not canonically purple. I'm pretty sure she's dark-skinned in the book.)