4.5 stars
This is the third book in a series, and I would strongly recommend you don’t start with this one. This review will contain minor spoilers for Cinder, the first book in the series and Scarlet, the second book, so if you’ve not read them, go read them first. This review will be here when you’re done.
Crescent Moon, or Cress, as she’d prefer to be called, has spent the last seven years all alone on a satellite orbiting Earth, monitoring communications for the Lunar government and doing all sorts of tricksy things to make sure Lunar ships can travel undetected to the planet below. About once a month, her boss, Queen Levana’s head thaumaturge (think scary psychic) Sybil comes with more supplies, and to check on whatever progress Cress has made. At the moment, Sybil wants her to locate the missing Lunar fugitive Linh Cinder and her accomplices, not realising that Cress and her hacking skills are in fact what’s keeping the authorities from locating the spaceship they are on.
While once a loyal Lunar citizen, happy that despite being a shell (a Lunar who doesn’t possess the ability to manipulate minds with glamour) she has been kept alive (because the law states they should be killed at birth), Cress has long been trying to subvert Queen Levana every chance she gets. She devours all she can find of Earthen culture and media, and sent the warning to Cinder that Levana was planning to kill Emperor Kai once they were married. Now she’s hoping that Cinder will be able to rescue her from her prison on the satellite. She’s researched everything she can find on the cyborg fugitive and her accomplices, even a lot that’s not available through official channels. With her hacking skills, Cress can get any kind of written record, if she just works for long enough. She’s especially taken with the handsome Captain Carswell Thorne, who claims to be a rogue and a scoundrel, yet Cress is convinced he’s a good man, really.
So Cress is rescued, Cinder defeats the evil queen and it’s all good, right? More on my blog.