Cress (2020)
Cress is a 2020 young adult fiction book written by Marissa Meyer.
Cress has spent most of her life alone on a satellite, with netscreens for company and a talent for hacking that no one taught her. Queen Levana uses her to hunt down Cinder and the crew, though Cress would far rather help them. Cinder and Captain Thorne are already fugitives, plotting to unseat the Lunar queen with Scarlet and Wolf beside them. Meyer takes the Rapunzel story into orbit, giving the tower a new shape while the group's plan grows more dangerous. The cast keeps expanding and the odds keep getting steeper.
Quick answers
What is Cress about?
Cress has spent most of her life alone on a satellite, with netscreens for company and a talent for hacking that no one taught her. Queen Levana uses her to hunt down Cinder and the crew, though Cress would far rather help them. Cinder and Captain Thorne are already fugitives, plotting to unseat the Lunar queen with Scarlet and Wolf beside them. Meyer takes the Rapunzel story into orbit, giving the tower a new shape while the group's plan grows more dangerous. The cast keeps expanding and the odds keep getting steeper.
When was Cress published?
Cress was published on 4 February 2020.
Who made Cress?
Cress was written by Marissa Meyer.
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Cress in our writing
A few thoughts on Cress
The tower-bound heroine and her rescue owe an obvious debt to Tangled, which shares the buoyant tone and the reluctant escape. For the widening ensemble of misfits pulling one impossible job against an empire, Guardians of the Galaxy hits the same mix of banter and stakes.
A crew going up against one ruler who wants them gone
Cress joins Cinder's small, mismatched crew plotting to unseat Queen Levana, an underdog band against one entrenched ruler. That shape also drives Cinder and Scarlet's earlier fights in the series, Guardians of the Galaxy's outlaws against Ronan, The House of the Scorpion's clone confronting the drug lord who made him, and Carve the Mark's heirs caught in a war between rival empires.
Ragtag ship crews holding together through one long, bad plan
Cress spends most of the book crammed onto the Rampion with a crew that argues as much as it fights, patching a plan together as they go. Illuminae and Gemina's doomed evacuee fleets, Aurora Rising's misfit squad, and Starsight and Cytonic's outnumbered pilots all run on that same nerve, small crews improvising against odds built to crush them.
Rebellions against whoever runs the world, brought to the screen
Cress plots to bring down Queen Levana's total control over the Lunar people, the same fight that plays out on screen in The Hunger Games' rebellion against the Capitol, Divergent's revolt against a rigged faction system, Shadow and Bone's uprising against the Darkling, and The Maze Runner's kids turning on the organization that built their prison.