Winter

A fitting end to the Lunar Chronicles, all things considered.

BY way of criticism, this book is a lot longer and more complex than any of the others. More than once I felt the scope and number of threads weighing down the narrative. The unabashedly happy ending, while earned, is more than a little improbable and dare I say contrived. I feel like the depictions of future tech, geopolitics, and bloody combat are thin at best, requiring a fair suspension of disbelief (see below for my sidebar rant on guns)

Perhaps I wanted this series to be hard sci-fi for adults when realistically it's a space opera fairy tale for teens.

But it is an unabashed fairy tale after all, and the DNA of that genre flows well in the veins of this book. More-so than any of the others in my opinion. Where the expected callbacks to the source stories have at times been heavy-handed and clumsy (Particularly in Cinder), in this they seemed to “fit” better and didn't feel as obvious. Very minor spoiler, the literal poisoned apple was probably my favorite. It made perfect sense for Levana and was pulled off perfectly. The world-building finally gets a chance to shine; I liked the depiction of Luna as a alien society in so many ways (including the details required to make it work with the limited resources of the moon).

And while I complain about it above, the happy ending really is welcome. This series grew on me over time, and I'm glad the characters made it out okay. I would recommend this to anyone who likes YA sci-fantasy and isn't afraid of suspending disbelief a little.

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Rant spoilered because it's just me blowing off steam and doesn't have much bearing on the review as a whole.

The handling of guns in this series confounds me. It's idiotic. None of the characters use them in ways that make any sense. No one uses them from ranges closer than point-blank. Only once does someone snipe at a thaumaturge from a distant concealed position (you'd think this would be an obvious tactic considering how they and the queen routinely wander, smug and self assured, into wide-open killzones). Multiple times characters call their shots, giving Lunar opponents ample opportunity to counteract the bullet with mind control or a meatshield. The mechanics of the guns are inconsistent too; sometimes they seem to work like modern (semi)automatic firearms, other times they're more like 18th-century flintlocks. It's almost never clear whether a character is using a rifle, carbine, or pistol, even when that kind of detail should have a bearing on how they move and approach a situation.As a moderate gun nut, this kind of thing makes me twitch. Just once, I would have liked to see someone handle a firearm with anything approaching military efficiency. Considering how many characters explictly have that kind of training, it's mind-boggling that none of them make use of it. Honestly this series would have been better off without firearms entirely, because as-is they're barely more effective than slingshots, throwing knives, or squirtguns.