Cress by Marissa Meyer

YES! I was able to read an ARC copy of CRESS borrowed from my friend Karin! Here is a copy of the book I read:

The big cover reveal was this past week and as with the other two books in the Lunar Chronicle series it does not disappoint:

MY REVIEW:

I am a huge fan of series. I love them! I'm addicted to them. I can't seem to ever have enough of them. I'm obsessed with collecting every book in the series. Sometimes though I have gotten disappointed in a series and thought about actually not buying any future books in that series...That is so not the case in The Lunar Chronicles!! Each book so far has been just as good as the very first one. CRESS does not disappoint from the opening pages to the very end. The Lunar Chronicles have become one of my favorite series of all-time.

As you can tell from the cover there is a take on the Rapunzel fairy tale in CRESS. Instead of the princess stuck in the tower though Cress has been stuck in a Satellite for 7 years monitoring Earth for her Lunar Mistress Sybil. Dreaming of someday being rescued by a handsome prince, Cress spends her days alone entertained only by her dreams and the monitors that fill her satellite.

Cinder and the rest of the cast are all back in CRESS. Cinder and Captain Thorne are still on the run from Queen Levana's army. They are now joined by Wolf and Scarlet. Cinder is trying to find a way to stop the wedding between Emperor Kai and Queen Levana without starting a war of epic proportions. When they all become separated it looks like their mission is doomed. With Lunar ships waiting outside of Earth's atmosphere it is only a matter of time before Queen Levana's wishes are granted and she becomes supreme ruler of all.

With each book and each added character I become more of a fan of these books. Captain Thorne as the worldly rogue and Cress as the innocent and naive make the perfect couple! Cinder and Kai seem like a lost hope with Kai going to marry Levana, but all hope is not lost for them as a couple. Wolf and Scarlet are not very prominent in CRESS, but their relationship has developed and there is a strong bond between them. Then I think my favorite character is the robot Iko! She cracks me up with her antics of trying to be human. She is quite entertaining.

The ARC copy of CRESS has 550 pages in it and I have to say I was disappointed when I turned that last page! The published copy doesn't come out until February 2014 which means the last book in the series will not be published until 2015. That is a LONG time to wait for the ending of this wonderful series. If you haven't picked up The Lunar Chronicles yet I would say they are a MUST READ. Here are my reviews of CINDER and SCARLET.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

First off, don't you just love this cover?! From the first time I saw it I wanted to get this book and read it. Yup, I love a good cover!

Cinder is a cyborg. She lives with her guardian and 2 step sisters. Yes, this is a retelling of Cinderella. 

Cinder is a mechanic in the marketplace. She can repair just about anything.  Prince Kai, the soon to be emperor of New Beijing, brings his android for Cinder to fix. Cinder can't believe when the prince seems to be flirting with her. But Cinder knows that she can never be attractive to him once he finds out that she is cyborg.

When the dreaded plague attacks Cinders step-sister Peony, Cinders step-mother immediately volunteers Cinder to go to the palace research facility to be tested on for a cure. No cyborg that is tested on ever comes out alive.

When Kai's father dies from the plague Kai is made emperor. Being forced to marry the Lunar queen in order to save earth from war, Kai holds a ball to announce his coming marriage. Barely able to be civil to the queen, Kai is determined to save his people from war with the Lunar's. Cinder has found a hidden chip in Kai's android that will expose the Lunar queen's plans for war. She must go to the ball in order to inform Kai before it is too late.

I really enjoyed this story and am looking forward to the next book in the series. Cinder kind of reminded me of the Uglies, Pretties, Specials series by Scott Westerfeld. I don't even know why? Maybe because of the post-apocalyptic flavor to it? Maybe because of the advanced technology? Whatever the reason, with robots, spacecraft, cyborgs, romance and evil queens and step-mothers Cinder is a fun read and a great new twist to the Cinderella story!

The Ask And The Answer by Patrick Ness(Kindle)

The book starts out where The Knife of Never Letting Go left off. Todd is being held in New Prentisstown by Mayor(self-declared new President) Prentiss. He won't tell Todd where Viola is or even if she is alive. The Mayor has seemingly walked into Haven and taken over without a fight. He has set himself up as President. He and his army have separated the women from the men.

Viola is in a house of healing. The healers running the place are women. They will not tell her whether Todd is alive or dead. When Mayor Prentiss shows up to question her he too will not tell her about Todd. He wants to know about her ships that are coming to New World.

One of the first things that President Prentiss has done is to take away the cure for Noise. Supposedly as punishment for not following orders. He seems to have no noise of his own though. And he is somehow managing to manipulate people's thoughts and actions.

When some of the women escape New Prentisstown and start an attack on the city calling themselves The Answer, it is the beginning of war. Todd feels that Viola has abandoned him. He is being manipulated by the President. He is sent to work at a monastery using the Spackle as slave labor. Davy Prentiss is in control of the site. It is a nightmare for Todd watching the Spackle being mistreated. Viola is desperate to save Todd but Mistress Coyle refuses to allow her to go on raids to rescue him. Only 8 more weeks remain before the ships are to arrive on New World. She failed to get a message to them to let them know what was happening in the new world.

With two people seemingly manipulating two different sides, war seems inevitable. On which side will Viola and Todd be? Or will they be separated forever by their doubts of each other and the manipulation of people over them?

Wow, there were some scenes in this book that were hard for me to read. The torturing of the Spackle and the women was horrible. For the most part though the book was fast paced and I was very invested in finding out how it turned out. If I hadn't been reading it on my Kindle I would have turned to the end of the book and read the last couple of pages(YES, I am one of those!), just to see how things turned out. As it is I didn't do that and it looks like I will have to get the last book in the series to find out how it all ends. This book had so many different emotions in it.  A son's desire for his father's approval, betrayal, love, loyalty, sadistic behavior, manipulation, power hunger, depression and many more that I am missing I am sure. It made me angry at times, made me want to shake a couple of the characters and say "snap out of it!", made me want to exact revenge(ah, there's another one!), made me nauseous a couple of times. A sign of a good book is when it causes your own emotions to come into play along with the characters in the book.

The New World by Patrick Ness(Kindle)

Way too short! But I enjoyed it. You can read this prequel in about 30 minutes or less. It helped to read this in order to understand where Viola came from and why. It doesn't really have to be read before The Knife of Never Letting Go to understand that book though.

Erratum by Walter Sorrells

Erratum=an error in writing or printing.

Jessica has always felt like she doesn't belong. Her family feel the same way about her, but they accept her because they love her. Dale is her best friend because he too is  a misfit. He lives in a very poor part of town. He has 8 brothers and sisters and his parents have been beaten down by life. His father lost his hand at the sausage making plant in town and has been sitting in front of the TV doing nothing but drinking for years. His mom is bitter and old-looking. Dale doesn't spend much time at home. He has dreams of what he would love for his family to be like. His father throwing the football out  in the yard with him, and his mother baking cookies in the kitchen and caring for the family. Dreams that seem almost like reality.

When Jessica stops into an old bookstore that she has never seen before things are about to change. She finds a book in the store that has her name on it. The title is "Her Lif". As she starts to read she realizes that the book is the story of her life. When she reads that the owner of the store is about to kill her she barely manages to escape before it actually happens. From there things start getting weird. Her and Dale go to the local library where they manage to lose the book. While trying to find it they meet different people along the way and find that there are alternate universes and that it is up to Jessica to save this universe. The question is what reality is the "real" one?

Things start changing as a black hole opens up and starts deleting the town. It is imperative that Jessica find the book and set things right before the universe they know is obsolete. Dale is helping her until he finds his perfect family. Then he doesn't want things to change. It is just like he always dreamed. His father smiling and playing with him in the yard. His mother making fresh cookies in the kitchen and caring for her family. He starts to forget what his "old" life was and fits right in with his new. In the meantime Jessica finds that her family is not the same either. What she finds she does not like.

Once Jessica finds the book she has a decision to make. Will she keep what she knows is not real with a chance that the universe could be gone in an hour or a thousand years, or will she choose the reality that she does not like in order to preserve the universe the way that it should be?

I liked this story, but had a hard time following some of the science stuff in it. It was humorous and pretty fast-paced.