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Sunday 13 December 2015

The Lunar Chronicles – Marissa Meyer

Patsy shares her newly found reading interest in The Lunar Chronicles series of YA scifi/fantasy. 

The topic of this blog today is partly the result of a comment from a friend, and partly the result of my September jaunt to Western Australia. Why?

Well, my friend and I like to talk about new books – for any audience – and she mentioned The Lunar Chronicles. And what has a trip to Perth to do with it? I was booked to return to Sydney on the Indian-Pacific train and really needed to take something to read which would fit into my tiny on-board case; this spurred me to familiarise myself with my mini-tablet and its capacity to download books. So I have the Chronicles on my tablet and have managed to read most of them in the last weeks.
 
There are actually five Chronicles so far: Cinder (published 2012), Scarlet, Cress. Fairest, and Winter. I have to admit I have yet to read Fairest – it didn’t seem right to read that before Winter was published, as it appears to be outside the main narrative of Cinder’s adventures.

The series is loosely based on some well-known fairy tales; Cinder of course is Cinderella, complete with Ugly Sisters; and Scarlet is Little Red Riding Hood (you’ll have to work out the others for yourselves). But its timeframe is futuristic, with six political entities on Earth (the Eastern Commonwealth, the African Union, the European Federation, the American Republic, the United Kingdom, and Australia together make up the Earthen Union) and one on Luna; with spaceships, cyborgs, shells, and androids (one of whom, Iko, is my favourite character in the Chronicles….).
 
Those of your secondary school students who enjoy a rollicking, adventure-studded romance would enjoy these stories; all the loose ends are tidied up by the end of the series in a very satisfying manner. I have just one question though – how do cyborgs actually go about their daily life processes?

The stories have been published in audiobooks, book, and e-book format, and are available from LINC Tasmania in various formats.

Patsy Jones
CBCA(Tas) treasurer, retired librarian, retired teacher

Editor's note: Fairest provides an entertaining prequel to the highly engaging Lunar Chronicles series. Marissa Meyer also maintains a great website for fans.





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