"Winter" by Marissa Meyer

Ahh -- the delightful sense of "something" when you finish a series -- particularly when it takes FOREVER for the final book to come out.  I read a lot of "first book in the series" as part of my job, but this was a series which had me reading the whole thing.  That's a good sign.  As mentioned in previous reviews, Ms. Meyer did an outstanding job of world-building in this SciFi/Action/Romance twist on Fairy Tales.  The "Lunar Chronicles" series is inventive, fresh yet familiar, fun and engaging.  This final book, at 823 pages, seemed overwhelming, but, like J.K. Rowling, she writes in an accessible, friendly way, which can draw you in.  The short chapters and changing perspectives had me careening through the novel much faster than expected. 

I sometimes tell people they don't have to read certain series books in order.  That's not the case here, where the back-stories of our previous heroines (Cinder, Scarlet and Cress) weave very heavily into the stories of the new characters, centered around Winter.  Throw in interplanetary war, a ravaging disease and mutants and you have a story which spins from one couple trying desperately to connect to another.  For those afraid of "mush", no need to fear.  The romance is there, but it is more spare than I expected.  This is about battles, and more battles.  There is lots of blood (real and imagined, but for that, you have to read the book).  Even the ending, which is satisfying, didn't exactly wrap up the way I expected, given the fairy-tale underpinnings of the whole thing.  Nonetheless, it was a terrific conclusion to a series which became far more epic and complex than I ever expected when reading "Cinder", the tale of a cyborg Cinderella.  A great escape from a hot summer day, I curled up all day on a Sunday and plowed through half of it.  Enjoy.