Audiobook Review: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4)
by Marissa Meyer
Narrator: Rebecca Soler
Published by Macmillan Audio
Publication Date November 10th 2015
Source: Library
Genres: Young Adult
Goodreads

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend–the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

First Impressions:

Winter by Marissa Meyer is the conclusion to the Lunar Chronicles.  Ever since I finished Cress I had looked forward to reading the conclusion to the Lunar Chronicles.  Sadly, I was not as swept up by the story as I had hoped to be.  Cress ended with a cliffhanger and I expected that same energy to continue through this book as well.  However, that high-speed spaceship chase and kidnap of Scarlet only led to disappointment.

Character Impressions

I quickly became sick of Kai and Queen Levana’s will they won’t they wedding. The indecisiveness of Kai going through with his shame marriage to save the country became tiresome. He needed to make up his mind and stop pining for Cinder, or grow a pair and go after her. Instead, he was Princess Leia, but not as bad-ass.

Cinder was her usually save-the-day-self making the responsible choices to save the kingdom and risk her life in the process. Cinder was a steady character who unfortunately didn’t show any growth from the novel’s predecessor Cress

As a child Snow White was my favorite Disney Princess and I looked forward to her story. Unfortunately, she came off as an annoying child who had nothing behind the surface of her good looks. In fact, it was annoying that she was able to gain control through this attribute. However, considering Snow White was able to win over the huntsman and seven little men in the Disney adaptation, this should not have surprised me.

Scarlet and Cress were strong characters in the earlier books and seemed to get lost here. Scarlet’s go-get-em attitude and Cress’s IT skills had been cleverly built on were put on the back-burner as the fight for Kai’s heart and the throne to Lunar took center stage. Their lack of individuality and tendency to blend in bothered me

Narration Impressions

The saving grace of the novel was the narrator, Rebecca Soler. Her voice-over work in the series was superb as she had the astounding ability to make the listener lost in this fairy tale retold.

Final Impressions

The conclusion was predictable. All four of our heroines end up with their prospective lovers and, surprise, surprise, Cinder and Winter jointly rule in peace and harmony. Overall, Winter was an unsatisfactory ending to a series which held great potential.