The Lunar character we all love to hate

Blurb:

Mirror, mirror on the way.  Who is the fairest of them all?  Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as ruler who uses her "glamour" to gain power.  But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lives a very different story - a story that has never been told ... until now.  Marissa Meyer spins yet another unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit and death. This extraordinary book includes an excerpt from Winder, the next book in the Lunar Chronicles series.

Review:

So now we know the origins of Levana and why she constantly wears that blasted veil whenever she is somewhere where she cannot control people’s minds.  You sort of want to sympathise with her but she is too unlikeable, a true nefarious villain from days of yore.  Levana is definitely a product of her upbringing.  Obviously insanity runs in the family and this becomes her driving force.

She needs an alliance with earth as she is systematically depleting Lunar’s resources with little or no regard as to how it affects her people, but no matter she can control them with her mind.  She will go to any length to get what she wants, and that even includes impersonating someone’s ex-wife, creating a monster army to do her bidding, and committing murder.  She is truly a wicked, psychotic, twisted person. 

On a slightly lighter side, well it isn’t really, we also learn the origins of Cress and the part of Cinder’s story that she cannot remember.  Finally we are further introduced to Winter and her back story.  As in the traditional tale Winter was obviously too beautiful so Levana took her revenge on her too (like Levana’s sister did to her!).

Unfortunately there are a couple of incidents that are briefly mentioned yet we receive no detail about them at all, not least Levana’s speech at her parent’s funeral and the death of Channery.  This reader fells that so much more could have been made of these and other events in the story which would have negated the novella finishing at seventy odd percent but rather at 100%.  

At the end of this novella are the first couple of chapters for Winter.  I personally did not read this as I want to enjoy the book in its entirety – a taster would only make me want it NOW and it’s not out yet.

This book is far darker than the previous books, as I suppose they should be as surely the moon is darker than the sun.  I would recommend this for all of the Lunar Chronicles fans out there and that you read this after the other novels in the series (as the author wrote them).

I really liked this but I didn't love it so gave it 4 stars on Goodreads and on Amazon.