"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.)

"Cress" by Marissa Meyer

I knew it. I knew it! The plague turns people blue!

(Back during the first book, I theorized that the plague in this series--letumosis, also called "the blue plague"--turns people blue as one of its symptoms. This I inferred from the fact that it's called "the blue plague." However, I didn't remember any actual confirmation of that until I ran into some in this book.)

Anyway. As you may be able to guess from the cover, this is a retelling of Rapunzel. But because this is a sci-fi series, Cress (our Rapunzel) is imprisoned on a satellite instead of in a tower, and her escape involves a partially botched reentry after our Gothel character tries to ruin everything. (Despite her best efforts, however, Gothel only ruins some things.)

I actually don't think I've read the original fairy tale. I'd watched Tangled (2010), but that isn't the most faithful adaptation, so I missed out on some details that I think this book did in pretty cool ways.

Case in point, in the original, the prince was blinded after getting shoved out of the tower. Which makes the fact that Carswell Thorne acquires some head-trauma-induced blindness from getting thrown around during the reentry make a lot more sense. Given that blindness from head trauma is actually a thing that can happen, that's actually rather brilliant.

Carswell "Probably Flynn Rider Guy" Thorne, by the way, is our prince for this. He first showed up in the previous book. As I suspected, the reason his cargo ship can go to space is for plot reasons, so he can rescue Cress from her satellite. Cress has an almost comically bad crush on him, because she's sixteen and he (thinks he) is Han Solo. It's honestly kind of adorable.

"Thinks he is Han Solo" is pretty much Thorne's entire character; he wants to be this cool smuggler person with a stolen spaceship, but he can't quite pull it off. Case in point, he starts the series... in jail. For stealing that spaceship. He doesn't even have a grand plan to escape, he just sort of gets dragged along in Cinder's beecause she needs his spaceship.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for some sexual references and a rather disturbing telepathic torture scene.

4 stars.

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

(Endnote: I'm just glad the author picked "Cress" as the name for her Rapunzel character, and not "Spinach" or "Parsley" or something.)

"Scarlet" by Marissa Meyer

Welcome to the Future European Union, where there are still farmers. This we know because our protagonist, Scarlet Benoit, is one of them. I honestly thought this was going to be set in Future Africa, but I was wrong.

As you may be able to guess, this is a Little Red Riding Hood retelling. Complete with |genetically engineered wolf-hybrid soldiers|. Our Big Bad Wolf is named, [drumroll please]... Wolf. He and Scarlet also fall in love over the course of the book, because of course they do. (This falling-in-love also comes with a side effect of Wolf stopping being evil.)

(The |wolf hybrid people| follow those discredited theories about alpha and beta and omega wolves and pack dynamics and all that. However, putting the best possible construction on this, it's possible that they follow those because |they were engineered by the moon people, who probably haven't seen an actual wolf pack in generations and so are going off those instead of any actual science. But that theory set me wondering if they howl at the moon, and if so, whether they howl at the earth or at the floor when they're on the moon|.)

I suspect our Flynn Rider character, for the next book (which I suspect is going to be a Rapunzel retelling), has shown up in this one. He's slightly insane, or possibly just very weird, and he has a space cargo ship. Well, a space-capable cargo ship, because I don't think there are any Mars or Venus colonies, and I also don't think the evil moon people want to do much trading. So really, I don't know why his cargo ship can go to space, except for plot reasons if he turns out to be Flynn Rider.

(I know Disney made up Flynn Rider for Tangled. But they made him out of the prince who's in the original story, and it's easier to say Flynn Rider than "the prince from Rapunzel".)

Oh, and also: |prison break!| Because Cinder |got thrown into jail| at the end of the last one, at |the behest of the Evil Queen|. That's where we picked up Probably Flynn Rider Guy.

[Edited on 2/1/2025; changed cover image]

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for violence and sexual references. (There might also be some bad language in there, but I don't remember any.)

4 stars.

(Endnote: For whatever reason, I seem to have been obsessed with parentheses (these things (that are on the outside of this clump of words) that I've been using a lot) today.)

"Cinder" by Marissa Meyer

Behold, it's Cinderella, except it's set in Future China and there's evil moon people. And also Cinderella is a cyborg who's also a mechanic, and there's a plague that nobody can figure out how to treat.

Thankfully, Future China doesn't seem to be Communist anymore. (The fact that apparently this universe has had two more world wars might have something to do with that.) People can own their own businesses now -- or, in the case of the main character, people's stepmoms can own their businesses.

This is a retelling of Cinderella, but it isn't purely Cinderella; I'm pretty sure the author had the entire series at least mostly conceptualized before she started writing this one. So the Rapunzel character (I think book three is about her) and the Evil Queen show up in this one. The Evil Queen is appropriately Evil.

There are four more books in this series, and I intend to continue through them. And not just because this one ended on a cliffhanger.

The pumpkin carriage equivalent in this is a really old, orange car. I don't actually know what kind of car it's supposed to be, so I imagined it as a Volkswagen Beetle.

There's like three different characters who could conceivably be the fairy godmother. Probably they all are. I was pleased that |the doctor guy turned out not to be evil|.

I really liked how they did the "Cinderella has really small feet" plot point: the main character is a cyborg, and one of her cyborg parts is a foot. Which is really small.

[Edited on 2/1/2026; changed cover image.]

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for some bad language, violence, and sexual references.

4 stars.

(Endnote: The plague turns people blue. Or something. It's called "the blue plague", so I can only assume part of its symptoms include turning people blue.)

Mini-Reviews 10: On Top Of Some Covers, All Covered With Snow

Dragon Kingdom of Wrenly: The Coldfire Curse by Jordan Quinn (graphic novel art by Ornella Greco)

This is rather below my general reading level. Let's just leave it at that. It's about dragons and a curse that's making it be winter (and, surprisingly, isn't the White Witch's fault).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for cartoon violence, or possibly on the high side of E.

3 stars. It isn't bad, it's just that I would have loved it if I was about ten, and (spoiler alert) I'm not ten.

Tags for this one: 3-star, adventure, dragons, fantasy, junior fiction, manga/graphic novel, rated E10+

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

"This is a Hansel and Gretel retelling." You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? But you're actually wrong. It's the Snow Queen.

Now, granted, the title would make a lot more sense if it were a modern-day Hansel and Gretel retelling. But, as I said in the last paragraph, it's actually a modern-day Snow Queen retelling. With a few bits of some other Hans Christian Andersen fairytales thrown in; there's that one about the red dancing shoes, the little match-girl shows up (but, unfortunately, sans |the Death of the Discworld to help|), and there's possibly some Little Red Riding Hood in there as well.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for dangerous bits and violence (among other things, the plot gets kicked off by the main character's best friend getting a shard of glass in his eye). Straightforward enough to be a sort of RPG.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, adventure, fairy tale retelling, magical realism, modern setting, rated E10+

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie

Apparently this one was written because one of Agatha Christie's nephews (I think) complained that all her murder mysteries were too clean and bloodless, so she wrote this one specifically for him.

 

Yes, it was still Christmastime when I read this.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for mmmuuuuurrrder and discussions of marital infidelity. It's not gory or anything.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    Colonel Johnson, Chief Constable of Middleshire, might be of the opinion that nothing could beat a wood fire, but Hercule Poirot was of the opinion that central heating could and did every time.

    Page 84.

Tags for this one: 4-star, mystery, rated T

(Endnote: The title for this post was originally going to be "Mini-Reviews 10: 10.0x10^0" before I realized that all three of the books I'm reviewing here have snow on the cover.)

"Witches Abroad" by Terry Pratchett

This is a very different book than Unseen Academicals. Part of this may be due to the fact that it doesn't take place in or around the Unseen University, and only actually mentions Ankh-Morpork once or twice. My favorite character overall did show up, though: Death.

(Is it weird that my favorite character is Death? He's just kinda nice, and I do have a fondness for overpowered bystanders.)

Basically, this is a story of three witches (Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick) traveling to Discworld New Orleans (which has been partially turned into a generic fairy-tale city) to stop the story of Cinderella from happening. Because one of Cinderella's fairy godmothers told Magrat to, and the other two insist on sticking their noses into her business. It has a different style of humor than Unseen Academicals, and I didn't care for this one as much. 

 

We also get a couple of other stories dumped into the mix, notably a house |falling on Nanny Ogg for no reason. Nanny Ogg is fine,| apparently due to her hat.

(Note: Speaking of Nanny Ogg, did you know that the .ogg file format is how all of Minecraft's music and random sounds are stored? Now you do.)

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for more crude humor, alcohol use, and swearing. Would probably be easier to videogameify than UA.

 

After long deliberation, 3 stars. Wretched hive of scum and villainy it may be, I liked Ankh-Morpork better.

 

[Edit: Removed a note-to-self that I somehow missed.]

Favorite lines:

There's one on the Very Long Quotes Page, as quote 3.

    On page 6,

    Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy seraph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the  name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off.

    Which is hilarious on its own, but then we get this on page 130:

    When it came to sending palaces to sleep for a hundred years or getting princesses to spin straw into Glod,* no one did it better than Black Aliss.

    *Black Aliss wasn't very good with words either.

    Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling "banana", but didn't know how you stopped.

    Page 186.

Appearances of Death count: 2.

(Endnote: No, Kittens. Death is solid, not liquid.)

"Fantastic Creatures" anthology

This one isn't as good as the other one I reviewed, but I'm reviewing it anyway.

"Three Steaks and a Box of Chocolates" by A. R. Silverberry: Kind of boring, about a country doctor and a mountain man who has a mysterious monster friend. Its time period is somewhat ambiguous.

"Snapdragon" by Lea Doué: Local mom gets wronged by a man, overreacts, curses both daughters so they can technically never be wronged in that way but also their lives are super terrible now because the curses are poorly executed. Also kind of a retelling of Princess and the Frog.

 

"The Golden City Captives" by Julie C. Gilbert: A guy and his girlfriend get enslaved for the arena and then turn out to both be shapeshifters. Ended too abruptly for my taste.

 

"Seekers" by Intisar Khanani: A little girl has a knack for locating hidden things. |Turns out she's a selkie|. My synopsis is bad, but the story is decent.

"Mystery of Asgina Lake" by Caren Rich: Nobody believes the lake monster is real, except the sheriff's twin daughters. Who find the lake monster. It is not friendly. This one was fairly good.

"Skin Deep" by Morgan Smith: The first one that made me go "Welp, this is not as family-friendly as Tales of Ever After." Basically some girl has to get married to the prince, who's a horrific monster because fairies are jerks. And then {T15+ they play Strip Fantasy Dice Game}. There are so many other things that could have happened, my man! (well, woman, actually.) Did not love this one.

"The Last Chronicle of Pete Mersill" by David Millican: Evil life-draining beings have taken over the world and wrecked most of it. One guy murders a bunch of them. Then he dies (would spoiler tag that, but come on, look at the title.) Too bleak for my taste.

"Priscilla, the Magnificent, Flying Giant Squid" by L. Palmer: About a woman who honors her dead colleague by transporting a sentient kraken via dirigible, despite the fact that pretty much everyone else says A) sentient krakens don't exist and B) if they did, you couldn't transport them via dirigible. This one is okay.

"An Adventurer's Heart" by Nicole Zoltack: A vaguely Greek Mythology-flavored one with jewels that do magic stuff. Didn't love it, but it's not bad.

"Destiny's Flight" by Frank B. Luke: Needs more worldbuilding. Has a vaguely Old Testament flavor, but also a vaguely Medieval Crusades flavor. And some evil guys. Apparently written by a pastor, though I can't speak to what kind of pastor. This either needs to be more or less like Narnia.

 

"The Kappa" by Lelia Rose Foreman: Short, relatively pointless story that reads like a Japanese folktale (and may actually be one). It involves a kappa, because of course.

 

"Celebration" by Arthur Daigle: A king dies. Everyone's sad. Then a bunch of goblins steal the corpse, bury it, and celebrate because said king was actually decent to goblins (who aren't evil in this). This guy wrote my favorite story in the other one, and this story is similarly good.

 

"The Nether Lands" by David Millican: Yeesh. The one that involves demon hunting, and also 85% of the inappropriate-for-children content in the whole anthology. Did not like this one.

"Talori and the Shark" by Jessica L. Elliott: Feels like several fairy tales mashed into an unidentifiable paste and then formed back into a story. It's not my favorite, but definitely better than the previous one.

"Reviving the Sword" by Kandi J. Wyatt: A centaur attempts to re-empower her magic sword. Kind of boring.

"Mothers' Night Out" by D. G. Driver: Graphic violence! Basically the new hire at the daycare gets stuck babysitting all the employees' babies at night while their moms go do stuff. |Turns out they're all werewolves|. Did not like this one either.

"The Mage and the Spotted Wyvern" by Craig J. Price Jr.: A solid story, if not one with anything particularly special about it. Its plot is oddly hard to describe.

"The Very Last Dragon" by Katy Huth Jones: Imagine St. George and the Dragon, but told in a somewhat silly and satirical fashion. This one is okay.

 

"The Adventures of Zero: The Quest for Wormsroot" by Vincent Trigili: A kid attempts to go find a rare root so the village doctor/healer/alchemist will take him on as an apprentice. Fairly entertaining.

"Ishka's Garden" by Bokerah Brumley: A princess's fairy friend gets abducted, so the princess goes after her. Has a decent plot twist at the end.

"Absolutely True Facts about the Pacific Tree Octopus" by H. L. Burke: Little girl gets taken in by Internet hoax that turns out not to actually be hoax. Not great, not terrible.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for sexual references (I'm looking at you, The Nether Lands) and graphic violence ("Mothers' Night Out", anyone?)

3 stars, overall. Most of the stories are fairly okay, there's just a couple that are nyehhhhhh. I'm glad this is the first book in the series, as that means it improves as time goes on.

(Endnote: I'm willing to bet some fake internet points that there are very few other blog posts which use nyehhhhhh as a predicate adjective inside a dependent clause.)

"Tales of Ever After" anthology

This is a collection of 16 stories by various people, some of which stories were good and some of which were okay. The stories include:

"Cinders" by Kendra E. Ardnek: Cinderella, but with a person who's actually a cat |who's actually a person|. And a Cool Old Wizard Guy. I liked this one.

"At the Corner of Elm & Main" by H. L. Burke: In which a lamppost becomes sentient. This one was decent.

"Tears of the Sea" by Savannah Jezowski: The Little Mermaid, but not really. I enjoyed the twist that |the main character's human obsession doesn't end in romance|.

"Steelhand" by Ashley Capes: Sleeping Beauty... sorta? But with an evil alchemist and a hero with a mechanical hand. Imaginative.

"King or Beggar" by D. G. Driver: Basically just King Thrushbeard.

"The Girl Who Talked to Birds" by Kristen S. Walker: It's about a girl who talks to birds. Apparently part of a larger series. This one is fairly good.

"The Princess and the Stone-Picker" by Sarah Ashwood: Feels like it could be an obscure fairy tale. I didn't like it much, but that's just because initially stuck-up protagonists annoy me, no matter how much better they get.

"Wake the Moon" by Annie Louise Twitchell: This one was good. It's a fairly well-executed modern one involving personified celestial objects.

"The Greatest Adventure" by J. M. Hackman: Slaying the dragon! And (surprise surprise) the dragon is actually evil.

"Third Princess" by Emily Martha Sorensen: In which the first two royal siblings also succeed. I liked it fairly well.

"A Week After Midnight" by Alex McGilvery: Basically a "what happens next" for Cinderella. Wasn't my favorite, but I didn't dislike it.

"Being Seen" by Gretchen E. K. Engel: In which a girl is invisible for no discernible reason and tries to find love despite the fact nobody can see her. |And then a blind guy shows up.| Decent, I guess?

"The Quest for a Wide-Awake Princess" by Lia London: A prince tries to find a normal princess who doesn't have horrible trouble sleeping (coughPrincessandthePeacough) or horrible trouble not sleeping (coughSleepingBeautycough). This is one of those stories that lightly pokes fun at fairy tale tropes.

"How to Hide a Prince" by E. J. Kitchens: What if, instead of turning him back human, kissing the frog prince turned you into a frog? And what if nefarious people tried to get you to kiss the frog prince? Not great, not terrible, this one.

 

"Believing Fairy Tales" by Arthur Daigle: Sarcastic shrine tender guy has his shrine invaded by Evil Guys who think there's a magic sword hidden inside. Plot twist: |there is a magic sword hidden inside, sealing a terrifying monster|. Further plot twist: |The shrine tender guy is the terrifying monster, bound in human shape by the magic sword|. This is definitely in the top three best stories in this collection, in my opinion.

 

"The Loathly Princess of Edimor" by L. Palmer: Not my favorite. A princess tries to escape marriage by having a witch turn her into a swan. It doesn't go super well.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T overall. There are some stories that fall below that.

4 stars, as an overall rating; I'm not going to bother giving each individual story its own star rating.

(Endnote: Somehow we managed to pick up the seventh one of these first, and incidentally also the cleanest of the ones I've read. Not to say the others weren't good, but their content level is higher. [EDIT: This isn't the seventh one, it's the fourth. I'm not sure where I got "seventh" from.])

"Alliana, Girl of Dragons" by Julie Abe

Take standard vaguely-European setting of Cinderella, plus the basic plot. Add medieval Japan to setting and stir until mixture is about 3/4 Japan and 1/4 Europe. Wrap mixture around Cinderella plot. Increase magic in story from 1 to approximately 4 (of 7). Trim off end. Serve warm over rice.*

It's a decent, Japan-flavored Cinderella retelling, in other words, albeit one that could have used a bit more denouement. It feels like the author was intending to have a specific climax for the story, wrote it, and then got slightly lost because she hadn't actually thought about what would happen after it. It felt kind of rushed.

 

And, yes, there are dragons involved. One of which Alliana does end up riding on a couple times. That's not really a spoiler because, c'mon, look at the cover.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for jerkfaces and some scary scenes. I'm pretty sure not many people want to play through the opening depressing-ness of a Cinderella story, though, so this would have to overcome that hurdle if it was made into a game.

End-dissing aside, it was a good book. Had the denouement been up to the same standard as the rest of the book, it might have been the latest addition to the ranks of 5-star-rated books. But as it now stands... just 4, thank you.

(*Endnote: You don't actually need to do this step.)