Fairest: The Lunar Chronicles: Levana's Story (Lunar Chronicles, #3.5)

by Marissa Meyer

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.

• ISBN10: 1250774055
• ISBN13: 9781250774057
• Publish Date: 1 November 2020 (first published 27 January 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Square Fish
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

Proceed With Caution:

This book contains graphic descriptions of death, murder, and abuse.

The Basics:

Fairest is a novella that is listed as belonging between Cress and Winter, and I think that's a good place for it, despite no actual events from those books taking place. By that point we've seen enough of Queen Levana where an origin story would be effective.

My Thoughts:

I love me some villains and Queen Levana has been a good one throughout The Lunar Chronicles. She is desperate to be the ruler of Earth, although we never knew why. I assumed she was just power hungry and this was her next great conquest after killing everyone else who stood between her and the crown of Luna. But that is only part of the story. Fairest goes into great detail of Levana becoming the cruel ruler that she is and explains why she has her sights set on Earth and is wiling to do anything to claim it.

Fairest is heartbreaking and heart-stopping. It starts when Levana is fifteen, right after her parents were murdered. We see the cruelty she endured at her sister's hand, which explains a lot about her as an adult. Not that it excuses her behavior at all, but I feel like I understand why she's so attached to her glamour and being in control. This novella also goes through the most awful romance in the universe, and I mean that in the best way possible. There is nothing right about that relationship, but I believed how much Levana wanted him and wanted it to work out. It's just awful.

By the end of these 200 pages we have a true villain. It didn't happen overnight. Levana was always...off, but over the years, life just kept chipping away at her and formed her into this embodiment of cruelty. She was basically in charge of Luna since she was a teenager, because her sister was actually the worst ruler ever. Levana picked up the slack and used that to her advantage later. Is she a better queen than Channary? I can't even answer that. Channary just did not care about politics and the actual day-to-day responsibilities, and she was a straight up awful person. But Levana understands politics which ideally would make her a better ruler, but she is not fit to rule. Fairest shed new light on Levana as a person and as a queen, and OMG...I can't wait to see if she gets what's coming to her.

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog: www.thepunktheory.wordpress.com

After reading Stars Above, I dialed my hopes down a little for Fairest. In all honesty, I expected it to be another filler, written for the fans to make some more money with a series that's already finished.
However, I was pleasantly surprised!
Fairest is actually a fascinating account of Levana's background that is 100% worth reading. I don't care if you hated Levana or rooted for her, pick up this book and check it out.
I didn't love it as much as the original Lunar Chronicles books, but it's an amazing addition. (Unlike Stars Above) it adds so much depth to the character of the evil queen. The book could just as well be titled "There are two sides to every story". Marissa Meyer managed to answer a few questions I had left after finished the last book in the original series.

[alindstadtcorbeax]

Star Rating: 3.8 Stars

I couldn’t give this quite 4 stars, if only because I really still don’t feel pity for Levana. Am I supposed to? Her actions are abhorrent! Horrifying. It was written beautifully, though... that I can’t deny. The 1.2 stars not given are all for content.

[nannah]

Oof. I love The Lunar Chronicles, and Cinder is one of my favorite books, but this one ... just wasn't a good read (for me). I get this is a novel(la?) about a villain's origin story, but reading about how this villain raped someone from basically the book's start to end isn't something I can handle. At all. And it seems to have a drastically different audience than The Lunar Chronicles that it seems like it doesn't fit well.

Book content warnings:
rape, sexual assault, noncon (from cover to cover)
reaaallly uncomfortable manipulation (")
abuse

Fairest is the origin story of Queen Levana, the villain of The Lunar Chronicles. It's more like a novella, and at the end it's revealed that it was originally a short story. Because of the very uncomfortable content, I think it would work better as a short story than a short novel. It would be so much easier to digest content like this in a shorter work, and I still think the molding of Levana's character could still get across.

It was very, very difficult to read this book, and I'm way beyond the target audience's age. Sure, I could just be a wimp with PTSD (which I am), but damn, the drawn out rape and manipulation of one of the characters by Levana at times was so graphic it was just ... too much. Way too much.

It's at times like these I'm shocked that books don't contain some kind of content warnings near the front. I mean, even movies and video games do. Why not books? People like me can get seriously triggered and have unnecessary anxiety attacks when we could instead be warned and avoid them. I don't know ...

Anyway, it's a solid novella, but the content made it extremely unenjoyable for me.

[anastasia]

Getting to see what Levana's life was like before being Queen was sooo beautiful. Marissa Meyer is an amazing author~

[ellieroth]

para mi es la villana menos interesante que he leído

[Liz (Bent Bookworm)]

~*Full review notes on The Bent Bookworm!*~

“Love is a conquest. Love is a war.”

Feels:

I went into this absolutely positive I would never feel anything remotely akin to sympathy for Levana. She’s such an unholy terror in the other books! And seemingly without reason. I felt like she just liked being evil and inflicting pain on others (which I guess is partially true but there’s so much more to it than that). However, about halfway through I changed my mind. Of course I already knew roughly how it would end, but it was just so tragic. I was so overwhelmingly sad. Levana as a young woman had so much potential, if she had just had someone to help her channel her emotions and teach her how to overcome.

Characters:

She tried to brush away the sting of rejection, the knowledge that she was still not good enough…she pressed the feelings down, down, letting them turn hard and cold inside, while her face was smiling and pleasant.

Obviously, this is Levana’s story. However, we see characters familiar to us sprinkled throughout (especially if you’ve already read [b:Winter|13206900|Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4)|Marissa Meyer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1470057036s/13206900.jpg|18390887], like I had), which was fun. Some of the characters that have already passed on in the other books are here and alive, too. We get to see some of the events that are only speculated on by Cinder and her friends. There are a couple of other characters that are new to this story, that really wrung my little heart out as well.

When we first meet Levana here she’s a relatively normal 15 year old girl! She’s been abused at the hands of her egotistical, cruel older sister, neglected by cold, distracted parents, and pushed and pulled into the image of a perfect princess (since, as the second born daughter, she’s only fit to be married off). Levana is gifted – or cursed – with a quick mind, intelligent and resourceful – the mind of a queen. She’s also terribly scarred, as much mentally and emotionally as physically. This combination has resulted in her being an entirely self-centered, self-absorbed person who quite literally never thinks of other people or their feelings except as they pertain to HER feelings or desires.

I think that in the end, selfishness was Levana’s true issue. She is one of the most selfish characters I’ve met in a long time. She becomes egotistical, but she didn’t start out that way. She reacts to pain by assuming that the world owes her something (not a hard conclusion to come to, when you’re a spoiled princess anyway). She comes to believe that she is entitled to whatever she wants, no matter what it takes to get it. No matter how much she might hurt other people, even the one person she actually cares about. She has no concept of true love for anyone. She hurts, but beyond that she knows almost no emotion.

Plot:

This is a novella, so the plot is pretty straightforward. I.e., how Levana became queen and all the people she hurt in the process.

Worldbuilding/Setting:

If you’re familiar with any of the other Lunar Chronicles books, you’re already familiar with Luna and her people. If you’re not, I strongly recommend starting with [b:Cinder|11235712|Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)|Marissa Meyer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1470056948s/11235712.jpg|15545385]! This story is basically the backstory that we never see fully in the main 4 books. You could start with Fairest, as chronologically it is actually first, but I don’t think it’s very interesting without that prior knowledge. The setting is there, but it’s not explained as well.

Rating:

3.5 stars. I’m struggling to give this one 4 because it really feels like a flashback that should have been somewhere in Cinder, also aside from Levana’s becoming a psycho it’s all focused on luuuuuuuv. And I just…I’m so tired of twu wuv being THE motivator of teen girls. I mean I know we were all there once. But come on! I’m stepping off my soapbox now…

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[Silvara]

Check out my other reviews, discussions and link ups at Fantasy of the Silver Dragon.

I'm glad we got to learn more about Levana in this book. Some of it explains why she was such an evil person, but not all of it. She seems to have no remorse about making people do what she wants even from a young age.

I loved that we got a lot of questions answered in the book. Like why and how the Lunars started making the disease and how it got to Earth. We also get to meet Winter's parents, find out how Levana got her scars, and learn just what really happened the day Cinder supposedly died.

Levana wants to be loved and respected more than almost anything. But the way she goes about making that happen were seriously twisted. After reading how Levana's parents and older sister acted, I think all of Luna must be grateful that Cinder was raised on Earth. The crazy gene won't get a chance to activate since she wasn't raised the way Levana was. Even though Cinder's home life wasn't ideal, at least she saw people around her who showed each other love and kindness. Even if it wasn't directed at her for the most part. The Lunar royalty? Not so much.

If you've read the first few books in the series, you need to read this one in order to understand Levana more. It won't make you like her, but at least you'll have background for why she's so evil and insane.

This review was originally posted on Fantasy of the Silver Dragon

[Jo]

Origially posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

I have been such a huge fan of The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, I was so excited while reading the first three, knowing I had Fairest, a prequel to the series from Queen Levana's point of view, to read! I was so looking forward to see why Levana is who she is, and what her motivations are. Fairest wasn't the story I expected, but it was wonderful!

I was completely surprised by Levana's story. We get her backstory, right from when she was 15 until just over a decade later. I was expecting to see a cruel young girl who enjoys others' pain, but what I found was a girl who is so unbelievably insecure. Something unimaginable happened in her past that left her terribly scarred. Levana is mocked and ridiculed by her malicious older sister Channery, everyone at the palace looks down on her and laughs at her, and her parents never seemed to care.

She has a crush on one of the guards, Evret, and when he shows some kindness, it's the first time anyone has been nice to her for so long. Her crush becomes a desperate infatuation, and with her innocence and naivety, she reads far more into his words than there is to read, and makes herself believe he is in love with her, too - despite the fact he is married to a woman he quite obviously adores with all of his being. Their story is such a tragic one, and I can't help but feel so deeply sorry for Levana. She just wants to be loved, and she makes herself believe it so fully, she won't accept any denial on his part. She does some terrible, disgusting things, but they are born of desperation. She is so alone, and so unbelievably lonely. She just wants to be happy, and believes Evret is the only person who can bring her happiness.

Queen Channery dies while her daughter, Selene, is just a baby, and so Levana becomes Queen Regent. Under the reign of her parents and Channary, Lunar hasn't faired as well as it could, in the hands of those who cared more about their own interests than that of their home and people. Levana, however, has always taken a keen interest in politics and how Lunar is run, and discovers she's actually very good at making decisionsand coming up with ideas for the betterment of her planet. Lunar thrives, and so does she. But it's here that we start to see the Queen she will become. The people of Lunar would be more productive if they had compulsory breaks, as she has seen works well on Earth. This works well, but she is advised that revolt is likely if the people of Lunar have too much time to socialise with each other, and so she decides there should be a curfew after the work day, which will be enforced by more guards. She starts small, but the dictatorial and manipulative rule that we know her for has it's roots here, taking away this freedom from her people. She doesn't even blink at the idea, but this is probably links to how she feels about how she's treated Evret, and she does genuinely believe that she's doing what's right for Lunar, and has her people's best interests at heart.

We get more of a history on leutomosis, the disease that ravages Earth in the first three books of the series. Dr. Erland touched on how he believes that Leutomosis is a biological weapon from Lunar, but in Fairest, we're told exactly how this came about. I expected to read about a cold-hearted Queen, who revels in the thought of the pain and death she is the cause of, taking sadistic joy from it all. But that's not the Levana we see. She's a politican and a strategist. What befalls earth is terrible, but Levana isn't enjoying it. She might enjoy how her plans are working, but it's a means to an end, the end being an alliance with Earth - that will be made by offering the antidote - so Lunar can have access to resources the planet is running out of.

They don't have huge parts, but we get backstory on Cinder as Selene and Cress in Fairest, and are introduced to Winter. We get her backstory as well as Levana's, as they are so intertwined, Winter being Evret's daughter. Although Fairest is a prequel, it works to read it after Cress but before Winter, as it was written, because of what we already know of Cinder and Cress. Some parts might not make as much sense, or the import will be lost, if Fairest was read before any of the other books in the series. I've been told you don't need to read Fairest before Winter, but having the insight on Levana when reading Winter can help you understand the woman and her motivations as you read Winter.

Fairest was a much more emotional read than I was expected. Levana is cruel, manipulative, and vicious, but she's also a woman who had a terrible childhood, who has only wants to be loved and liked, and do the best for her planet. She wants to be happy, but her unhappiness can't be cured with power, but she doesn't seem to understand this. So she's always striving for more, the next thing, and the then the next thing, and so on, desperate. Levana is a woman to be feared, but she's also a woman to be pitied.

Fairest was a wonderful novella, and I'm really keen to see how my view of Levana might change as I read Winter. This series is just incredible!

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

Queen Levana takes center stage in this novella to tide readers over until the conclusion of the Lunar Chronicles, Winter. In Fairest, the reader is given back story as to what makes Levana tick and the events that would lead up to Cinder, the first in the series.

While reading Fairest I was reminded of the Star Wars trilogy. Fairest to me was The Phantom Menace, it answered the mystery behind Darth Vader but was not on the same par as A New Hope. It was a good story but was missing the oomph that its predecessor had. Instead it just kind of dragged along and waited for Levana to quit being the awkward, shy girl into the mega-bitch who like Darth Vader with “The Force” uses her Glamor for evil, in fact both wear masks of a sort to cover disfigurement making them more mysterious and dimensional.

Fairest was plot based and was really a fact taker, learning of the beginnings of the virus that will overtake Earth, the birth of the Thaumaturge and the sisterly relationship between Levana and her sister Channary which has a Wicked Witch of the East and West vibe to it.

At the end of the day, This was a solid addition to the Lunar Chronicles and enjoyed the sneak peek of Winter, but I have conflicting feelings on Levana and feel this way about her story as well.