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

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

I’ll be honest, I wanted nothing to do with Fairest, a novella telling Levana’s side of Cinder’s tale. It seems all the rage these days to have these .5 short stories and novellas telling another side of the plot. And many times, I find them disappointing as they stray from the characters I like most in a series. (Side of Lord John, anyone?)

Here’s the deal. I loved Fairest. Levana is well-rounded, three-dimensional villain on par with Amy Dunne and Hannibal Lecter. Reading Fairest reminded me of some older episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation when the plot examined the mind of a particularly brutal serial killer. The viewer (or in the case of Fairest, the reader) has a chance to see inside the bad guy’s heart and mind and learn what makes him tick. Queen Levana is stripped of her glamour and the results are telling. Will you feel sympathy for Levana upon finishing Fairest or not? How does a person become wicked? Fairest gives readers a glimpse and let’s them decide.


This review was originally posted on Second Run Reviews.

[Joséphine]

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

Initial thoughts: This book will make you question all your morals because you will find yourself feeling sorry for Queen Levana. I don't think I've ever felt this degree of sympathy towards such a cruel villain before but then at the end my world was restored again because hey, covert biological warfare against Earth (Cress) and breeding of beasts (in Scarlet) and killing her own niece just to conquer the throne (in Cinder) were all terrible things.

Fairest offered a worthwhile glimpse into the twisted mind of Queen Levana. I felt that in some ways I understood her better as a person, while in other ways I could see why she acted the way she did (from avoiding mirrors to her insecurities). Needless to say, I didn't like her. Yet I read and enjoyed the whole book, which for me showed a great deal of craftsmanship on the part of Marissa Meyer as the author.

[leahrosereads]

I kind of feel like a horrible person for saying this...but, I felt sorry for Levana. Yes, she’s a psychopath, sociopath, corrupt, sadistic woman, but getting to read her journey and how she became the way she is, was extremely fascinating.

With her upbringing, Levana didn’t seem to even have a chance at being a decent person. In another book and in another world, she could have risen above all the hate and vile she was raised up in, to be a better person, to be the heroine of the story. However, that wouldn’t be the LUNAR CHRONICLES that I’ve come to love so much.. Instead, with FAIREST, we get to see Levana’s descent into becoming the twisted, corrupt bitch we all love to hate.

And still, I felt sorry for her. I would definitely recommend giving this a read if you love the series. Hell, I’ll even say that I think it’s a should read, and I normally don’t think that about novella’s or .5s of any story. In this case though, if you are reading this series, reading Queen Levana’s backstory should be a priority to get to before WINTER comes out.

I think by getting this story, the battle between Queen Levana and Cinder is going to feel incredibly more epic and more emotional, because Queen Levana isn’t just this evil ultra villain. We have her backstory now, and we’ve been able to see what makes her tick. Bitch still needs to go down.

Of course.

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

Marissa Meyer’s unexpected addition to the Lunar Chronicles series, Fairest takes readers back to the years before Levana was queen of the moon, and before she was plotting to conquer the earth, to tell the story of who Levana really is and how the political problems of Cinder (Lunar Chronicles #1) all began.

Villain origin stories like this one are always risky. Authors chance either undermining the delicious evilness of their villains by saying, “Hey, look, they were once good and sadly misunderstood” or diminishing the credibility of their villains by implying, “Why, yes, they were always evil. They were definitely born that way. Inherent evilness is a thing.” Meyer nicely avoids both problems by presenting young Levana as a delightfully complex character who walks the knife edge of having good intentions while being unmistakably unhinged. Readers have the pleasure of seeing her alternately performing good actions for all the wrong reasons and performing wrong actions for all the right reasons. Sure, Levana has a tragic backstory involving neglectful parents, but Meyer does not leave readers with this overly simply explanation for Levana’s selfishness. She adds layer upon layer to Levana’s tale, including a subtle hint that her sister may have addled her brain by using her Lunar gift too much on her while she was a child, until readers can no longer point and say, “I have definitely found the one reason Levana’s a villain.”

However, Levana’s complexity and the tour through her psychological make-up is really the high point of the book. Of course, it has a plot, and fans of the Lunar Chronicles can imagine it’s quite an interesting plot, if Levana is the driving force behind it. Nonetheless, Fairest still seems to be caught somewhere between wanting to be a novella and wanting to be a full-fledged novel. The individual events of the plot are enticing, but the overall structure falls flat. The book seems too often to be signaling its connection to the other Lunar Chronicles books (“Hey, it’s baby Cinder!” “Hey, this is the start of the warrior program!”), so readers may leave with the sense that Fairest is mainly trying to fill in existing story gaps for current Lunar Chronicles fans and not really trying to stand on its own.

Fairest is imaginative and complex. In a short space, Meyer deftly builds the world of Luna and presents an array of skillfully drawn characters. Levana may steal the show, but her sister and the love interest are also strong contenders for the attention of readers. Add to this a plot full of escapades, alternately moving or shocking, and Fairest is practically destined for success. However, it still ends up feeling underdeveloped. (Note that the publisher threw in three preview chapters of Winter at the end, just to bulk the physical book up.) I gave Fairest three stars on Goodreads because one of its main appeals is that Lunar Chronicles fans will have fun “getting” all the references. Readers who start the series with this book will probably have a more subdued experience.

[inlibrisveritas]

4.5 Stars

Fairest is a prequel novel that starts 17 years before the beginning of Cinder and focuses on the Queen Levana. I would say though this is a prequel I do not recommend starting here, but instead reading it in the order of publications (Cress then Fairest), as there are some things that are revealed in the fully books that would be spoiled by reading this first.

I loved getting to know Levana, and being able to be in her head space for a while because I learned a lot about her. Not only do we get to see how intelligent and cunning she can be, but we also get a front row seat to her tittering sanity. I can’t go into details of course, because this is definitely a story best experienced if the reader doesn’t know what to expect. We do get to see her softer moments, the reason for the veil, and just what happened to the previous rulers. Getting to know about some of the major background characters that are mentioned in the other three books, but never mentioned in too much detail (mainly because those characters didn’t know them) was really fun and at times incredibly heartbreaking. Part of me really felt awful for Levana, and then the other part of me would feel really horrified by everything she was doing and that pity would go away.

While I wouldn’t call this a necessary read for the over all plot , I do think it’s well worth the time if you want to know more about the main antagonist and just what makes her tick. Levana is a complicated character with a jumbled mess of a mind, and it was a treat to see her rise to power.

[KitsuneBae]

I like this book but it was either too short or the plot was absent that the least that I can do is to give it three stars.