Cress

by Marissa Meyer

Story summary: Retelling of "Rapunzel" in a futuristic, cyberpunk world where Rapunzel is stuck in a satellite instead of a tower, rescued by a dashing spaceship captain instead of a prince.
See the first books, Cinder and Scarlet, and the next book, Winter.

Why You Might Like This Book:

• AIs, mind control, evolved societies living on the moon, daring escapes, thrilling heroics, and lots of trudging through the desert.
• Captain Carswell Thorne: Han Solo of YA. 'Nuff said.

And Why You Might Not:

• By this point, with the story lines and relationships from the previous two books still not resolved, there ends up being a lot of threads going on at once. There are six or more different viewpoint characters, and it gets a little much at times.

Thoughts: This may have been my favourite one in the quartet so far. So much fun. So much Thorne.
Here are some thoughts in point form:

• Cress was adorable. I liked how different she was from many strong female heroines--including the ones in this series--being naive and romantic and anxious. As a female programmer myself, I thought the fact that she was an expert computer programmer/hacker was an awesome addition, although I wish there was more done with that. More details would have been best, but I can understand why it didn't go into that, considering most people probably don't want technical explanations. But at least it could have expanded on her particular brand of intelligence that would allow her to be so brilliant.
• The relationship between Cress and Thorne was also adorable, and my favourite romance of the series so far. (Up till now, the romances have been some of the least interesting parts of these books for me.) But they both made each other better people, despite being wildly different in character. And it didn't follow the cliched route of mutual instant attraction.
• Speaking of which: THORNE. So awesome. Normally people who are attractive and know it are really not my type, but Thorne totally makes up for it with his humour, energy, and cleverness.
• There's that one scene where Thorne dashes in to save Cress from...their allies. And the scene with "Little Cress"'s death. How Cinder got Kai back. The tiny bit with Wolf and Cress being romantic and sappy together. Thorne/Cress in the climactic battle. So many hilarious and awesome moments. There are two things that'll make me especially love a book: either clear structure or tons of amazing moments between characters (even if the structure isn't great). This was definitely in the latter category.
• The little bit of Winter we saw near the end was great. She's totally bonkers--it's amazing. I love me some non-typical heroines, and she definitely seems to fit the bill Can't wait till her book comes out in a few months. As they say: "Winter is coming!"

Grade: 4 stars