Fairest : The Lunar Chronicles Levana's Story

It's taken me almost a decade to finish The Lunar Chronicles, mainly because of this book. I had believed this to be a bridging novella between Cress and Winter, and I honestly did not care about Levana enough to read this when I first read books one through three. However, upon actually forcing myself to read this just now, I have discovered that it is a prequel and not required reading, to which I say: why did nobody tell me this before?? I could've saved like an hour of my time and finished this series years ago. Man.

4/5 stars

I love reading about villains' origin stories. It's always been one of my favorite genres, especially when it's well done like this one. Although we get into Levana's cruel past, we don't necessarily feel pity for her. Instead, we get a better understanding of why she does what she does in other books. At times, this book can get extremely hard to read if you are light of heart. Levana quickly changed from being pitiful to slowly becoming the coldhearted, calculating villain we know and hate/love. 

We feel a slight pity for her because we learn that she was manipulated, bullied, and tortured by her older sister. We also learn she was the cause of her face becoming disfigured, causing her to be named “the ugly princess of Luna”. We see how this greatly affects her throughout that series. She always makes sure the glamour is on and is out of sight of all mirrors. Still, this isn't enough to justify all the things she says and does throughout the book. One of the lines that stuck out to me was, “Levana had not seen the bodies, but she had seen the bedrooms the next morning, and her first thought was that all that blood would make a very pretty rouge on her lips.” As the book goes on, we see her sister mysteriously die after being poisoned, making Levana the queen. This only worsened her behavior, solidifying her as we know her in the main series. We still see moments of weakness and humanity, but they are very rare and are followed by horrible actions. Overall, it did a great job of helping us understand her motives without causing us to over-sympathize with her. We see how many more issues this woman has and it actually makes us see her as being worse and crazier than she is in the main series. 

This has definitely become a favorite and I would recommend it to anyone reading the Lunar Chronicles. It gives you more information about Lunar society, but you also come out with a better understanding of who Levana is. Reading this isn't really necessary as we get some of this information from the main series.

You know her as the Queen but before that, she was just Levana. Princess Levana, second daughter of the royal family.

Even as a teenager, Levana was bitter and cynical. Her parents didn't love each other or, in truth, her. She was stuck with a real bitch of an older sister. She doesn't remember ever seeing real love. Except, just once, she saw a man look at a woman with utter adoration. That look, is Levana's undoing in every way.

Make no mistake, even though this is far from a romance novel, it is all about love. How love hurts. How love is never what you expected it to be. How love, sometimes, isn't even what you wanted. How love can so easily get twisted into something else.

One thing I've never liked is the idea that love can make you evil. (Don't like the idea that love can save either. Love just is, it's neither good nor bad.) What love can do is make you stupid. And love makes Levana very, very stupid. It was, however, nice to see how twisted love can get.

I'll be honest, this isn't the story I was hoping for. I hoped this story would tell how Levana used to be a normal, loving girl that slowly became the queen that we all know and love (or love to hate). I probably expected too much out of this book - but after Scarlet and especially Cress - I thought this story would be more adventure and court manipulations and less love.

I think I actually liked Levana more before I read this than I do now. Before she was mysterious and slightly sinister. Now she's just a pathetic girl who's never had love. (Of any kind.) And she is obsessed with love - both the love of a man and the love of her moon.

While this book was minorly diverting and very readable, I'm just not sure how it adds anything to The Lunar Chronicles. It fleshes out some things, little backstory details that never really needs to be fleshed out. It does give you a glimpse at a young Winter and a young Jacin - which was admittedly nice. It does explain that Princess Selene's mother wasn't a good person. At all.

Perhaps if you are a real Levana fan, you might enjoy this. Maybe. (Then again, you might hate how she was just a broken girl.) Of course, if you're a fan of The Lunar Chronicles, you have already read this or almost undoubtedly will. Just don't expect anything world shaking.

(Originally posted on my blog: http://pagesofstarlight.blogspot.com/)