book review: cinder and scarlet by marissa meyer

Cinder and Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi YA
Rating: 7/10
Goodreads

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

It's been a while since I've done any reading for pleasure and a really long time since I read any YA and these two books were the perfect re-introduction to reading after a summer of academic reading! These books are the first two books in the Lunar Chronicles series, a YA fantasy/series very loosely modelled on traditional fairy stories.

Cinder is very much 'Cinderella with robots' and pretty much all of the elements of the original story are there in some form or another. I enjoyed it a lot though I felt that some of the action scenes were a little difficult to follow with the characters' confusion infiltrating a little too much of the narrative. I also thought that Prince Kai could have been a little more developed - I appreciate that this is the beginning of a series and that all the characters will get fleshed out as we go through but there wasn't enough of Kai for me to become particularly invested in him or his and Cinder's relationship. That said, I loved the ways in which the story was modernised - the world building was great and I really hope we get a little more backstory and history of Earth and Luna as time goes on. I also really appreciated the global scope of the novel - international relations and foreign diplomacy are some of the key themes of the book and I was really intrigued by the 'new' geography of the Eastern Commonwealth, Luna and the other nations that had emerged out of the Fourth World War. YA lit tends to limit itself to very specific settings so it was really refreshing to read one which was initially based in the East and which reached out to the rest of the world and space.

I don't want to give too much away about Scarlet but I think I preferred it to Cinder. The story deviated from Red Riding Hood in interesting ways and I thought Meyer did a really good job of developing the universe she'd set up in Cinder. While Scarlet was a slightly less interesting protagonist than Cinder (probably a result of the numerous POVs this book covered), Wolf was developed much better than Kai; while I was less emotionally invested in Scarlet and Wolf's story I was more engaged by their relationship than Kai and Cinder's. Like I said, the global scope of the novel was set up from book one so the change of setting felt really natural - the characters grew in to the world rather than the setting having to expand in line with the story. While the premise of Cinder was relatively straight-forward, Scarlet was a more nuanced exploration of that universe and a more interesting use of the fairy story framework.

Telling stories of an intriguing sci-fi world filled with lady protagonists who are far from being damsels in distress, The Lunar Chronicles is an imaginative and engaging series that I'll definitely be following.

book review: seraphina by rachel hartman

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Genre: Fantasy YA
Rating: 7/10
Goodreads

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high. Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered—in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.

The mark of good fantasy, at least in my mind, is that pretty quickly the mystical/fantasy element disappears and the world becomes as real as any other and on that front this book really works; the world was so full I never doubted its plausibility. In a sense that's helped a lot by the fact that the basic setting uses medieval/early modern Europe as a cultural touchstone so anyone who's read other historical novels/watched period dramas can pretty easily fill in any of the gaps. Because the foundation is so solid and the dragon-lore described is so comprehensive, the book never really felt like fantasy, it was just a historical novel with dragons!

It's obvious that Seraphina is the start of a series in the sense that the world-building takes precedence over plot and for some people that could be a turn-off but I really liked the world so was quite happy! Seraphina herself is a perfectly amiable protagonist and while she's exceptional in many ways, she is quite ordinary in others. There is a romance storyline but it's quite understated and is hardly the driving force of the story - I didn't exactly get weak at the knees over it (and I wish that it hadn't resorted to 'love' so quickly) but it worked in terms of character growth so I don't begrudge it at all.

By far my favourite thing about Seraphina's character and the novel in general was the way she talked about music. Being a music scholar music is Seraphina's livelihood and her world is structured around it - her life (and so the novel) is full of dances and instruments, rehearsals and performances. More than that though music is a huge part of Seraphina's personal history and something from which she takes a lot of joy and comfort and I always found Hartman's writing at its most moving when she was describing the power of music:

There are melodies that speak as eloquently as words, that flow logically and inevitably from a single, pure emotion. The Invocation is of this kind, as if its composer had sought to distill the purest essence of mourning, to say, Here is what it is to lose someone.

Overall, Seraphina is a gentle and enjoyable read that would appeal to both fantasy lovers and people who enjoy historical fiction. I'll definitely be reading the sequel!