Fairest by Marissa Meyer

In this stunning bridge book between Cress and Winter in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana’s story is finally told.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her “glamour” to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story – a story that has never been told . . . until now. 

Marissa Meyer spins yet another unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit and death. This extraordinary book includes full-color art and an excerpt from Winter, the next book in the Lunar Chronicles series.

I was a bit reluctant to Reading Fairest, if I’m being honest. Queen Levana is the enemy we all know, the foe our heroes must defeat to gain peace for them, as well as Earth and Luna but yet, all we really knew about her were what we got from other people.

We saw the interactions she had with different characters, we got to see this mysterious woman with her glamour and veil covering a ruthlessness inside that made us despise her, but not really understand her. I believe that villains should be characters too, not just obstacles for people to move around them. We should see their motivations, their desires, why are they villains in these stories? If they are real, then the stories are real as well. And that’s why I’m so happy to have read this novella! Here we get to see Levana through her own eyes, her own twisted perception of herself. It didn’t make me love her, but that wasn’t the point, we get to know more about her, how she came to be.

It was incredibly fascinating and disturbing to watch Levana, from such a young age and witness as she herself turned into the very people she hated. How she managed to justify everything from her sick logic to make things work in her favour.

Before I had mentioned how the descriptions could be improved a little more to provide a better setting for the novel, and this is done wonderfully in Fairest. We can experience the Lunar culture, and the characters seemed more vivid thanks to it, there are so many details that we can see the world more clearly than in the previous books (Though I haven’t read Cress yet.)

It was so fun to read about Selene and Winter too! I lived for those moments when the two girls played as best friends and cousins. It was lovely, and I hope they can reunite in Winter.