{"id":2868,"date":"2021-12-15T15:00:05","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T22:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=2868"},"modified":"2021-11-02T19:49:35","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T01:49:35","slug":"book-fairest-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/15\/book-fairest-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Fairest (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fairest:Fairest: Levana\u2019s Story
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2015
\nAuthor: Marissa Meyer
\nLength: 392 minutes \/ 6.53 hours<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure when it happened, but somewhere in the last decade or so, the idea of \u201credeemable villains\u201d took off. So many stories had antagonists that had their heinous acts justified by some past trauma that somehow made them more human and understandable. While I appreciate flawed characters and the bad decisions that eventually led them down the dark and evil path, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s always necessary to make villains redeemable. That is unless it\u2019s done well. Fairest<\/em> does it well.<\/p>\n

Right from the first pages of Fairest<\/em>, the reader understands that Levana was the runt of the family. The amount of teasing and hypocrisy that formed this young girl into the evil queen she would eventually become is understandable. However, the real brilliance of this story comes in when Levana tries to solve her problems the only way she knows how: by manipulation. It\u2019s not entirely her fault, as the royal family seemed to be built on this foundation of getting what they want by any means necessary\u2014still, it doesn\u2019t excuse what she did.<\/p>\n

Even if Fairest<\/em> is only a side-story for the Lunar Chronicles<\/em><\/a> series, I think it\u2019s required reading to understand the series\u2019 main antagonist fully. If you want to read it chronologically (before Cinder<\/em><\/a>), it\u2019s a good amount of backstory that will help bring you up to speed, even at the expense of being spoiled by some of the (albeit obvious) twists of the series. If you read it after Cress<\/em> and before Winter<\/em>, then it stands as a much-needed flashback before the conclusion of the series. At the very least, I\u2019m glad that this story wasn\u2019t crammed into the other books and was given the room to be its own story.<\/p>\n

The best \u201cunderstandable villain\u201d I\u2019ve ever read, I give Fairest: Levana\u2019s Story<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fairest: Levana\u2019s Story Year: 2015 Author: Marissa Meyer Length: 392 minutes \/ 6.53 hours I\u2019m not sure when it happened, but somewhere in the last decade or so, the idea of \u201credeemable villains\u201d took off. So many stories had antagonists that had their heinous acts justified by some past trauma that somehow made them more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,54],"tags":[33,1640,55,2896,2898,2897,2620,2619,8,1596],"class_list":["post-2868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-book","tag-33","tag-backstory","tag-book","tag-fairest","tag-levana","tag-levanas-story","tag-lunar-chronicles","tag-marissa-meyer","tag-review","tag-villain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2875,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions\/2875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}