★★★★☆ Fairest, by Marissa Meyer
Love is the worst thing that can happen to a person
Fairest
Marissa Meyer
Love is the worst thing that can happen to a person
"Levana is a terrible, evil person."
"Levana deserves some sympathy."
Fairest is Marissa Meyer's attempt to reconcile these two statements. It won't work for everyone, but it worked for me.
Let us be clear: Levana is a bad, bad person. Some of the things she does are unforgiveable. (Even if you believe any sin can be forgiven if the sinner repents, Levana doesn't, so the issue is moot.) However, in Fairest we learn that Levana came to be that way because she was mistreated, horrifically, as a child and teenager. (Fairest, by the way, is a much darker book than Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter. Few things are more dangerous than opening a new book, and this one is not gentle at all, at all.) Forgive her not, but at least agree that she is to be pitied as well as condemned.
The blurb says, "Marissa Meyer spins yet another unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit, and death." To me the most interesting aspect to the plot was that love, which is generally portrayed as redeeming, is the wellspring of Levana's worst motivations and actions. I suspect this idea -- that love can lead to evil -- will be more disturbing to some readers than some of the more explicit acts of cruelty. It is not a new idea, however, and deserves a place in ones universe of possibilities.
Now, I know that some readers are already gearing up to No-True-Scotsman that proposition. "Love, by definition, cannot hurt or desire to hurt anyone. Therefore, if Levana's so-called love led to evil, it was not truly love." If that's what you need to comfort yourself, ...
Temporally, Fairest is a prequel to the entire series. It describes events that occur some 10-20 years before Cinder. Meyer recommends reading Fairest between Cress and Winter. I did not do that: I read the four main novels of the Lunar Chronicles first, then Fairest. In this review, however, I avoided spoilers for Winter.