Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

I loved this book!

This is book #2 in the Lunar Chronicles and is the sequel to Cinder. Cinder, as you will recall, was a futuristic sci-fi/fantasy retelling of the fairy tale “Cinderella”. Only this Cinderella was a cyborg with a couple of pretty explosive secrets. In Scarlet, we meet Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother, and the wolf. 

On the Earth created by Marissa Meyer, Scarlet is a market farmer whose grandmother has disappeared, and Scarlet will do anything to find her. Enter Wolf, a street fighter who Scarlet suspects is involved in her grandmother’s disappearance, but who agrees—rather unwillingly—to help her in her search for the slightly eccentric older lady. Meanwhile, Cinder must break out of prison and stay one step ahead of the evil Lunar Queen Levana who is inexorably pressing on in her quest to marry/imprison/kill King Kai and to reign with terror on Earth.

I think I liked this book even better than I liked Cinder. For one thing, it has Wolf, who I gotta admit I like better than our poor embattled Prince Charming (Kai) from book 1. I also really liked how Cinder’s story and Scarlet’s story intersected. This book was full of action--it didn’t stop running from almost the very beginning—there were very few quiet moments. It delighted me to find little echoes of other stories: the fairy tales, of course, but also Star Wars, Twilight, The Ship Who Sang (Anne McCaffrey)…I actually really enjoy recognizing snippets of other tales when I’m reading a good story. And this was very good story, full of unique elements and completely captivating.

I REALLY liked the book and can’t wait until the next book in this series is released (but I’ll have to, since it won’t be out until Feb 4 of next year!). I believe this YA series will have 4 books in all. Exciting!

Bad Language: Don’t think so
Sex: no sex—a few kisses, though