Scarlet

Scarlet is the second book in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, the young adult fairy tale science fiction series that began with Cinder. The series takes classic fairy tales and reimagines them in a science fiction future, and Scarlet is the Red Riding Hood entry, set in rural France and centered on Scarlet Benoit, a young farmer whose grandmother has gone missing under circumstances that the local police have refused to investigate.

The novel runs in parallel with the continuing story of Cinder from the first book, with the two storylines slowly converging as the larger plot of the wider series advances. Scarlet, frustrated with the official inaction on her grandmother’s disappearance, sets out to investigate herself with the unlikely assistance of Wolf, a mysterious street fighter she meets at a bar. Wolf is exactly as dangerous as the wolf of the original fairy tale, and Marissa Meyer reworks the source material in ways that keep the reader unsure of how the familiar story is going to turn out this time.

The parallel Cinder plot picks up immediately after the events of the first book, with Cinder having escaped from prison in New Beijing and now on the run with the petty thief Carswell Thorne, who serves as the kind of comic foil character that the wider series benefits from. The two plots eventually converge as Cinder and her growing band of allies cross paths with Scarlet and Wolf, and the larger story of the series begins to come into focus.

Marissa Meyer takes risks in this second book that pay off across the wider series. The Red Riding Hood material is reworked in ways that honor the source while pushing the science fiction elements considerably further than the first book had room for. Wolf as a character has more moral complexity than the simple fairy tale antagonist, and Scarlet is a strong protagonist whose direct nature contrasts effectively with Cinder’s more guarded character.

The Lunar Chronicles series eventually grew to four full novels, several novellas, and a graphic novel, with each book introducing a new heroine drawn from a different fairy tale. Scarlet sets up the wider Lunar Chronicles by expanding the cast and the world beyond what Cinder alone had been able to develop. For longtime fans of the series, Scarlet is essential. For new readers, start with Cinder and read in order.