Book cover from Goodreads.com.
As the fourth book (though it is marketed as book 3.5, a bridge between “Cress” and the upcoming “Winter”) in the “The Lunar Chronicles” series, “Fairest” is a prequel focusing on the past of Queen Levana. For fans of the series, the book no doubt answers a lot of questions. For those of us just entering the world of Luna, it’s an exciting trip into darkness that puts the other books on our to-read list.
Only 15 years old, Levana is a traumatized princess living in the shadow of her cruel older sister. She casts a glamour to hide extensive scars — the result of an event we glimpse in bits and pieces until the end — and becomes the princess no one can recognize except for the protective guard following her around. It’s a different twist on the uncertainty of who a character wants to be when they grow up and it never comes across heavy handed. If anything, it’s like watching a little girl try to dress herself and resisting the urge to help her.
Surprisingly, other characters have the same attitude toward Levana. Anyone can see that her older sister is a bully who can’t be bothered with the details of ruling a kingdom, and Levana has to watch while everyone else gets to have all the things she can’t. She thinks she finds a friend in Evret, one of the palace guards, but that friendship turns into an obsession with making him love her. It would be too bad that Evret is already married and expecting a child, except Levana is delusional and desperate — the perfect recipe for crazy evil.
And she just gets creepier and creepier every time she gets any of the things she feels she deserves. The lengths she goes to just to keep all these things are barbaric and unforgivable, but we still feel kind of bad for her. She has plenty of reasons to be unstable, and she does deserve some happiness after her parents’ neglect and her sister’s abuse, but Levana’s crazy. By the end of the story, you can’t wait to read the other books and see when this evil queen will finally be struck down.
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