Scarlet is a novel written by Marissa Meyer. Released in 2013, it is the second novel in Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series and tells of Cinder breaking out of prison.
Characters[]
- Scarlet
- Wolf
- Cinder
- Prince Kai
- Queen Levana
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
For Marissa Meyer's second installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, she imagines Little Red Riding Hood set in the distant future. And yes, there is a big, bad Wolf.
Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns.
She's trying to break out of prison - even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive.
Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life.
When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder.
Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.
Summary[]
Scarlet Benoit is a young girl living on her grandmother's farm in Rieux, France. However, her grandmother has been missing for many weeks and Scarlet is certain that she's been kidnapped rather than left on her own will as the authorities believe. While delivering fresh goods to one of her loyal but unfriendly customers, her friend Émilie introduces her to a jittery and shy street fighter whose code name is Wolf. The same man who saves her after she makes a speech defending Linh Cinder, the Lunar cyborg who caused chaos at the Eastern Commonwealth ball.
She then notices a tattoo on his arm; a string of numbers and letters that hold no meaning to her. When she returns home, her estranged father is there, desperately trying to find something. She questions the burn marks along his arms from being tortured, and he says that the same people have her grandmother because she's hiding something. The one clue that he can remember is that the kidnappers had a tattoo on their forearm, similar to Wolf's. Scarlet heads out to question Wolf in a fight ring, where he defeats and almost kills the champion. The next morning, Wolf comes by her farm and tells her that the tattoo stands for a group he used to be part of and that they are the ones who kidnapped her grandmother. He decides to help Scarlet and they both embark on a trip to Paris.
On the train ride there, Scarlet meets a man called Ran, who Wolf seems to smell on her later. They jump off the train after a letumosis outbreak occurs and continue their journey through the woods. While resting, Ran shows up and Scarlet realizes that he and Wolf already know each other and don't get along well, and that Ran is actually Wolf's younger brother. Wolf fights with Ran and almost kills him until Scarlet shoots him in the arm. They leave Ran unconscious and get on another train to Paris as Scarlet learns that her father has died. Throughout this time, Wolf and Scarlet begin to develop romantic feelings for each other.
Meanwhile, Cinder teams up with captain Carswell Thorne, a fellow prisoner who stole a spaceship from the American Republic military, and they escape from New Beijing Prison. Cinder passes out while trying to start Thorne's stolen ship up and Thorne has to reboot her. They escape on the ship, a Rampion, but find problems with the autopilot. Cinder remembers that she has Iko's personality chip and inserts it. Once in space, Thorne asks Cinder where she wants to go and despite the fact that Dr. Erland instructed her to go to Africa, she chooses to go look for Michelle Benoit, a woman connected to the missing Lunar Princess Selene and Scarlet's grandmother.
When Scarlet and Wolf arrive in Paris, he leads her to where her grandmother is being held, but turns her in and reveals that he is a Lunar Special Operative, a bioengineered wolf-Lunar hybrid soldier who serves Queen Levana. Glamouring himself as her grandmother, Ran manipulates Scarlet into telling everything she knows about Princess Selene and why her grandma can't be manipulated. She recalls Linh Garan, the man who adopted Cinder after her surgery, talking to her grandmother but doesn't know why she is able to resist manipulation. She is then imprisoned.
At the same time, Cinder and Thorne land in Rieux and discover Michelle Benoit's shelter, where Cinder was held in a suspension tank for eight years and later turned into a cyborg. They then go to Gilles' tavern but are found by the military after tracking her dead stepsister's ID chip, which Cinder still had with her. Things go from bad to worse when Lunar wolf soldiers start attacking, following Queen Levana's order. Barely escaping, Cinder tracks down Scarlet.
Wolf visits Scarlet in her cell and kisses her in order to give her an ID chip, which she uses to escape and go to her grandmother's cell. Michelle Benoit tells Scarlet that Cinder is Princess Selene and that she must find her. Her grandmother also tells her that Scarlet is the granddaughter of Logan Tanner, the doctor who brought Selene to Earth and performed her cyborg surgery, eventually killing himself after suffering many years of Lunar sickness. Ran comes in and threatens her, but her grandmother sacrifices herself to allow her to run away.
However, after killing Michelle, Ran chases down Scarlet until Wolf appears and fights him, eventually killing him. Wolf then corners Scarlet and struggles with his thaumaturge's control, but is shot with a tranquilizer dart by Cinder, who thought he was harming Scarlet. Scarlet and Wolf reconcile, Wolf reasoning that he was able to overpower his wolf killing instinct due to his overwhelming animal-like instinct to protect his mate as Scarlet agrees to be his "alpha female." They all manage to escape in the Rampion with Cinder finally revealing to Thorne and Iko that she is Princess Selene.
Finally, Emperor Kai agrees to marry Queen Levana in order to stop the attacks against Earth.
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