Saturday, September 28, 2013

Review: "Scarlet" by Marissa Meyer

The sequel to Cinder, a spin-off of the classic Cinderella tail, this book tells not only of Cinder's adventures that continue from the first book, it also tells Scarlet's story of her grandmother's disappearance and the boy in the Wolf gang.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Classic stories rewritten? Cliche!" But not so! In Cinder, we find out that she's a cyborg, living in a future with hovercars and a hierarchy government. When you first read it, and Scarlet, you don't actually realize that it's a retelling of a childhood favorite. I read Scarlet and didn't make the connection, initially, that this red-headed and temperamental girl was the Little Red Riding Hood of my bedtime stories, and I was duly surprised by the mixing of the two fairytales.

Unfortunately, while I did enjoy the book, it's fate is that of many other sequels: it's not as good as the first. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad book, it's just not on the same level as it's predecessor. Something about the two very different points of view, goals, and attitudes of the main characters comes off as discordant and distracting from the story. If you can get over that, the novel is quite good, with completely separate types of thought in each character, something that is hard to achieve in writing; it's hard to have a certain writing style and give differing non-dialogue characterization.

All in all, I enjoyed this book for it's plot, creativity, and writing style, along with the execution of certain plot twists (which will remain unnamed), but I did find it underwhelming as a sequel.

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