The Lunar Chronicles Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Cinder | 2012 | Buy |
| Scarlet | 2013 | Buy |
| Cress | 2014 | Buy |
| Fairest | 2015 | Buy |
| Winter | 2015 | Buy |
| Stars Above | 2016 | Buy |
Renegades Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Renegades | 2017 | Buy |
| Archenemies | 2018 | Buy |
| Supernova | 2019 | Buy |
Marissa Meyer started the Lunar Chronicles as a NaNoWriMo project. The concept was Cinderella as a cyborg mechanic in future Beijing. Cinder was published in 2012, and the series grew to four main novels plus companion works. Each book retells a different fairy tale while building a larger story about war between Earth and the Lunar kingdom.
The Lunar Chronicles sold millions of copies and established Meyer as one of the most popular young adult authors of the 2010s. She followed the series with Heartless (2016), a standalone novel about the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.
Her Renegades trilogy, starting in 2017, is a superhero story set in a world where people with superpowers overthrew the previous government. The books examine what happens when heroes become the establishment and whether the system they built actually works.
Meyer studied creative writing and children’s literature at Pacific Lutheran University. She has said that fairy tales gave her a structural advantage as a writer because the audience already knows the skeleton of the story, freeing her to focus on worldbuilding and character development.