Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles
Cinderella is a cyborg in the futuristic city of New Beijing. Little Red Riding Hood is a kickbutt farm girl. Rapunzel is a hacker and an alien. Snow White is an addled alien princess.
Disclaimer: These are not the fairy tales you grew up with.
Confession: I kinda liked them.
I don't "like" books lightly, especially retold fairy tales; retellings so often feel overdone. But I didn't go in really expecting the series to stick closely to the fairy tales on which it was based, so the fact that the Lunar Chronicles only vaguely resembled the bones of these stories came as no major disappointment.
If you're looking for some sweet, lovely fairy tales retold, however, I recommend The Princess Tales, Ella Enchanted, or almost any of Gail Carson Levine's classics. If you're looking for some unique Young Adult futuristic science-fiction, the Lunar Chronicles might be your thing.
Cinder:
Each novel is not a completely separate story, but truly a continuation of the underlying plot: overthrowing the mind-controlling Queen Levana of Luna (the moon). Cinder is a mechanic in New Beijing. She also happens to be a cyborg and her metal parts dehumanize her in the eyes of society. She meets the prince (surprise!), falls in love, uncovers Levana's plot to take over the planet, and discovers that she herself is both one of the mind-controlling Lunars and the lost Princess Selene of Luna. She loses her cyborg foot at the ball.
The two main trends of possibly objectionable material I've seen throughout the series concern the romance and violence.
Obviously, there is a fair amount of romance as Cinder is based off of "Cinderella." Nearly every teenage girl in the Commonwealth has a huge crush on Prince Kai. Cinder herself likes him, and those feelings eventually turn to love as the story progresses. Queen Levana seeks a marriage alliance with the Commonwealth, which Kai resists. It is mentioned to Cinder that while her mother is the dead Queen Channary, no one is sure who her father was, since the queen was very promiscuous.
The first book has fairly mild violence. There's a plague going around, and Letumosis is nasty. At the Letumosis quarantine center, ID chips from deceased citizens' wrists are cut out and blood is depicted. Additionally, the Lunar ability of mind control allows Levana's servants to threaten Earthens by making them stab out their own eyes, though this scenario does not play out to its completion.
In the area of slightly more mature content: Cinder, referring to the surgery where she acquired her cyborg parts, mentions an operation to Dr. Erland. When he seeks to clarify that she is indeed referring to her cyborg operation, Cinder sarcastically replies, "No, the sex change." Later, when Dr. Erland mentions that her reproductive system was untouched by the cybernetic operation, Cinder says dryly that she's sure she'll feel grateful once she finds a guy "who thinks complex wiring in a girl is a turn-on."
Scarlet:
I'm just saying: this one was the best.
Scarlet Benoit is clearly Little Red Riding Hood; her grandmother is missing, kidnapped by a "pack" of men looking for information about Princess Selene--men who have been modified with wolf-like characteristics. Wolf, a street-fighter and former member of the pack, agrees to lead Scarlet to Paris where her grandmother is being kept. Unbeknownst to Scarlet, Cinder and an outlaw named Thorne have escaped the New Beijing prisons and are also on the trail of Scarlet's grandmother.
Scarlet is a whirlwind of emotion and intense suspicion. I think everyone really wants to not like Wolf, because HELLO--in what version of the fairy tale does the wolf NOT try to eat the little girl and her grandmother? But it's impossible to hate him. I honestly think he and Scarlet are better characters than Cinder and Kai; they have more flaws, more weaknesses, and a well-written relationship.
This second novel introduces more violence to the series as the "packs," imbued with wolf-like characteristics and physical capabilities, go nuts and start attacking people. They rip out throats with their sharpened teeth and fight brutally. Blood is depicted grossly throughout the book. Wolf fights viciously; he almost breaks the neck of a man he fights during one of his street-fights and might have drowned his brother, Ran, if Scarlet had not stopped him. After killing Scarlet's grandmother, Ran attacks Scarlet and says that if he wasn't so repulsed by the thought, he might "take advantage" of her, just to see Wolf's reaction.
As far as romance goes: the outlaw Thorne flirts his way out of trouble (or tries to), but Cinder is unimpressed. Scarlet learns that her grandmother was in a relationship with a Lunar man before Scarlet's father was born. Wolf forces a kiss on Scarlet at one point, in order to smuggle her an ID chip so that she can escape her prison. They kiss at one point and it is clear by the end of the book that Scarlet and Wolf have feelings for one another.
Cress:
Cress, an accomplished hacker and Lunar "shell" (she does not have the Lunar powers of manipulation), has been imprisoned in a satellite for most of her life. From her location, she works as Levana's hacker, programmer and spy on Earth. When Cress is given the chance to help Cinder, she warns the cyborg of Levana's plot. Cinder, Scarlet, Wolf and Thorne decide to rescue Cress from her prison, with disastrous results. Thorne and Cress are stranded in a desert, Wolf is hurt and Scarlet is captured by the enemy. But worst of all, Cress has to cut her hair.
Cress is a hopeless romantic and has developed an enormous fangirl crush on Thorne. For years she has been doing research on the famous outlaw and has successfully romanticized his character and roguish actions. Thorne, for his part, is a huge flirt. At one point he wins an "escort android" in a game of cards. The android, who resembles a very beautiful woman, is for Cinder's android whose body was destroyed, but whose memory chip still remains intact. Cress sees Thorne with the android, assumes that the machine is a real woman and becomes deeply upset. Towards the end of the book, there are a couple of kisses.
The violence in Cress was milder than that of Scarlet. A bit of the same--blood, crazy wolf-soldiers--but slightly more subdued. Scarlet is kidnapped and taken to Luna, where she is chained, collared and given to a Lunar family. The little boy practices his manipulation on her, causing her to see and feel snakes and other creatures attacking her. Scarlet scratches and gouges her skin during the hallucinations. Later, she is taken before Levana, and when she does not tell the queen where Cinder is, she is forced to cut off her own finger.
Winter:
The conclusion to the Lunar Chronicles features Princess Winter of Luna, stepdaughter of Queen Levana. Believe it or not, Winter is the most beautiful girl on Luna, she likes apples, and (gasp) Levana is jealous. In an unexpected twist, Levana actually orders Winter to be killed. The princess's death is staged and she is sent away by her guard and childhood friend, Jacin. With Scarlet's help, the two girls locate Cinder in time to help bring about revolution on Luna.
The violence in Winter is more akin to that of Scarlet than Cress; many battles take place during which wolf-soldiers brutally rip apart their victims and hunger for human flesh. On Luna, many executions take place by the condemned individual's own hand as they are manipulated to break their own fingers or slit their own throat. As a child, Winter used her Lunar abilities to keep a servant woman from killing herself. Later, she found out that the woman was a favorite servant of Levana's right-hand man Aimery, and that he'd been torturing the servant. The woman kills herself in a second suicide attempt. It is suggested that, considering the servant's situation, Winter should not have used her Lunar gift to stop the woman the first time. Traumatized, Winter refuses to use her Lunar gift ever again. This causes her to go mad and she frequently has hallucinations involving blood and decapitation. When told to kill Winter, her loyal guard and best friend Jacin instead stabs Winter's pet wolf and claims that the blood is Winter's.
As the most beautiful girl on Luna, men often stare at Winter, which ticks Jacin off. A palace guard corners Winter and tells her that he's been "waiting to have her alone for years." Winter refuses Aimery's marriage proposal, angering him. He later tells her that if she will not be his wife, he will have her as a possession. There are several kisses throughout the book: between Scarlet and Wolf, Cinder and Kai, Jacin and Winter, and Thorne and whatever woman happens to be standing nearby. At one point Thorne kisses a Lunar woman who has "glamoured" herself to look like Cress and tells her he loves her. This upsets Cress, who is unaware that Thorne thought the woman was herself. Wolf and Scarlet refer to one another as the other's "alpha female" or "alpha male," and they consider themselves "mates."
A couple other things: at a Lunar ball, it is mentioned that there are "companionship rooms." At the same ball, there is a Lunar man who glamours himself to look like a woman and briefly flirts with Thorne; I found this disturbing. Emperor Kai is, for a brief period of time, married to Queen Levana. At the end of the book he assured Cinder that his marriage to the queen was never consummated. This I found to be an entirely unnecessary bit of information, especially considering the intended age group the series is targeted for.
I would let our 14-year-old sister read the Lunar Chronicles, but I would not hand this series off to a child any younger. Though the violence is graphic and the romance pronounced, this categorization is mainly due to the unnecessary phrases and details Marissa Meyer slips into her series.
While Meyer's writing is nothing extraordinary, she is a good writer. I was impressed by how skillfully she was able to weave the classic fairy tales into her larger plot, but again--if you are looking for a lovely retelling of the fairy tales you know and love, the Lunar Chronicles are probably not what you want. The characters and their relationships are mainly what makes the series.