This year’s theme: RED RIDING HOOD

A reminder–The novels I’ll review during this year’s Fairytale Fantasy series:

Red Rider, by Kate Avery Ellison (2019, indie-published)—reviewed HERE

Wolves and Daggers: A Red Riding Hood Retelling, by Melanie Karsak (2018, indie published–Clockpunk Press, which seems to be owned by the author)–reviewed HERE

Beauty and the Werewolf, by Mercedes Lackey (2011, Harlequin Nocturne)–reviewed HERE

Crimson Bound, by Rosamund Hodge (2015, HarperCollins)–reviewed HERE

Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer (2013, Macmillan)–TODAY’S REVIEWED NOVEL

For the Wolf, by Hannah Whitten (2021, Orbit)

And finally: a medley of interesting outlier pieces, all based on Little Red

TODAY’S REVIEWED NOVEL:

Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer (2013, Macmillan)

Buy this novel–and all the books in its series, The Lunar Chronicles–on Amazon in hard cover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats. If you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can read it there free. At Barnes & Noble, Scarlet is available in hard cover, paperback, ebook, and audio formats, and the other books in the Lunar Chronicles as well. In addition, several of the series books (not Scarlet, though) are available in large print editions, and you can listen to the audiobook versions of several of the series books with a Barnes & Noble audiobooks subscription free–again, though, not Scarlet. Apple offers Scarlet and all the other books in the series in ebook and audio formats, and so does Kobo. For more about all these books, visit the author’s web site.

How about that, a sci-fi Red Riding Hood! This novel is set in a dystopian future where humans have settled the moon and then mutated. The moon people, led by their evil queen, want to become humanity’s new overlords. Against this setting, we have a girl with flaming red hair and a temper to match. We have a grandmother. And we have a lot of werewolf-type large buff guys. As with most of the books I’ve reviewed this week, the story may have been inspired by the Red Riding Hood folk tale, but there the resemblance ends. I keep being astonished, though, at how many of these Riding Hood retellings feature werewolves–and astonished, as I’ve said, to learn that werewolves really are part of the deep folkloric background of the tale.

Like Red Rider, the Ellison novel I reviewed on day one of Valentine Week, Meyer’s novel is set in the future, a dystopian future where werewolves play an evil role in turning the earth into a hellhole. Unlike Ellison’s novel, where the vibe is pretty much fantasy, the vibe in Meyer’s book is unmistakably SF, including all manner of SF gadgetry, including futuristic air cars and futuristic maglev trains. Scarlet is a girl who has had to learn to be tough, because she leads a tough life. When she meets a mysterious man (yep, he’s a prizefighter. . .werewolves and prizefighters. . .this must be a thing), she is drawn to him but also repelled by his strangeness. Her grandmother has been kidnapped, though, and the police are no help, so Scarlet takes help where she can find it–the help of the man named Wolf. Violence and peril ensue.

Here’s what happened when I started reading this novel. It is Book 2 of a series, and I had hoped this book, like other mid-series books, would catch me up about the doings of Book 1 in some handy little paragraph early on. Unlike the Lackey novel I reviewed a few days ago, the individual books of The Lunar Chronicles are not stand-alone novels within a larger framework, but true sequels. I soon discovered that without reading Book 1, Cinder (yep, based on Cinderella), I was at sea. Cinder, the title character of Book 1, plays a major role in this second book, too. After a lot of grumbling, I got Cinder and started all over from the beginning, Book 1, chapter 1, page 1.

I’m glad I did. The story arc of the series unfolds as a nice whole, even though Cinder’s and Scarlet’s stories, based on different fairytale tropes, have some differences. And best of all, there’s no hard cliffhanger ending at the end of Cinder. If you’ve followed this blog, you know how much I hate those. As a result, I had two great reading experiences. If I never continue to Book 3, I’ll still feel very fond of the two books I did read. And I really might continue, because the writing is good, the plot zips along, and the characters are fun. I really like Cinder and Scarlet. They are kind of anti-Disney anti-princesses. (That’s a GOOD thing.) Enjoy these books! If you do read Scarlet, though, I recommend you read Cinder first.

NEXT UP: As Valentine Week ends, I’ll do a quick mini-review of For the Wolf, by Hannah Whitten, and give you a link to my full review of a few year’s ago. I’ll also mention a whole treasure-chest of other Red Riding Hood experiences, some in book form, some not.