Howdy YAL!

Winter was a good book, but it was no means epic like I thought it was going to be.

Then again, when you wait almost eighteen months (from Cress) for the next installment what do you expect?

 Well, there was Fairest and I think having read Fairest helped AND hindered my reading experience of Winter.  

Fairest helped feel in a couple of the blanks that I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten had I just read the series without an extras.  It also fleshed out Levana who otherwise would be very one dimensional evil.

I didn’t even feel like Levana should be locked in the funny farm at the end of this installment, she was that bad.

One of the things, that I will give Winter is that although there is a happy-ish outcome the characters really had to work for their ending and not everything was perfect.  Each character is affected by the revolution in different ways.  It really did give you the feels, in all the various sorts of ways.

Like the tile suggests, this book is primarily about Winter.  To be honest, I wasn’t a huge Winter fan.  I think in part because it was so hard to know her.  This might’ve been in part because she was insane, but in a lot of ways I think the various view points were starting to get to the story.  While the well established characters really weren’t effected-much by the switch in point of views-new characters like Winter weren’t as fully formed as I would’ve liked.

Same goes with Jacin, he’s still a little blah.  But you need someone a little blah to be with Winter’s….well, Winter-ness.

As for the other characters, I thought some of the characters might’ve seemed a bit marginalized  and their stories weren’t as well formed in past books.  But I still was emotionally connected for the most part.

Levana is an excellent example of this.  As fully formed as she was in Fairest, she really is reduced to a one note vain villain here (see mentioned comment about no longer wanting her just to be locked up in the funny farm).  As for other characters I didn’t feel like I fully felt their angst with what occurred.  I mean some of the things that happened to the crew were pretty alarming, and you’d would’ve thought…

Going to stop because of spoilers.

I’ll say there was enough, just enough, to make me feel for them, but there could’ve been more.

I know I’m complaining about a lot of things, but really Winter did work.  It tied up all the loose ends in this series nicely and it was overall a pretty amazing series.

If you haven’t picked up the Lunar Chronicles you should.  It’s a fast paced series with a lot of great characters, and it hard to say goodbye.  Though I really do look forward to what Marissa Meyer has planned for the future.