Heartless by Marissa Meyer
A daughter who goes against her mother’s wishes, A second-in-command to wrong his master, a wronged master, and a madman. Heartless by Marissa Meyer tells the story of people who try to go against what they have heard about their destiny. What is the true meaning of a destiny? What is fate? Are we slaves to the past written for us, or can we carve into the universe? We are taught from childhood that “Anything is possible if you just believe.” But most of the time, we realize that anything is impossible, even when we try our hardest.
Heartless is not my first introduction to Marissa Meyer; the Lunar series was. A series with the same premise as Heartless but with fewer twists. Heartless is about the Queens of Hearts, but we discover how she became the way she is. Like in the Alice and the Looking Glass movie, minus the time travel. Meyer weaves aspects from the original Alice in Wonderland, but with elements of fantasy novels. The story develops from trying to avoid your fate at all costs, not from having basic knowledge of the tale of Alice in Wonderland.
We follow four friends on a journey of love, mystery, and broken expectations. Catherine Pinkerton, Jest, Raven, and Hatta spend lots of time together and lean on each other’s shoulders. Meyer intertwined aspects from the original Alice in Wonderland while adding elements from Meyer’s imagination. It isn’t easy to take an already established world with fully fleshed characters and turn it entirely on its head. But I feel that this is Meyer’s primary expertise, and how she transforms characters is a part of the excitement of reading a story in which you think you know everything. Sometimes, when reading a story transformed to highlight one or more aspects of the original story, I get overwhelmed with a certain satisfaction that comes from being a part of the joke. Meyer’s rendition of the Queen of Hearts, Catherine, wishes to become the baker for the kingdom with her maid as her business manager. At the same time, she is fighting with her mother about the king’s intentions to marry Catherine.
Lady Pinkerton mirrors who Catherine desperately doesn’t want to turn into. Catherine battles against the pressure of what is expected of her, as well as the constraints of her social circle. After Jestannounces himself in front of the whole kingdom, Catherine starts falling, immediately, in love, which, of course, would be frowned upon with public knowledge that the King is madly in love with her. As their relationship blooms and they plot to live happily ever away from the Kingdom of Hearts and Chess, they make a handful of visits to the well where the fates dwell. The sisters introduce us to the fate of the friends:” One to be a murderer, one to be martyred, one to be a monarch, the other to go mad.” The revealing of the fact that there is no escaping their fates starts a downward spiral that transforms into the characters that we know from the original story.
Taking established characters and archetypes of the original story and reshaping them to a more modern society isn’t a new concept, but it is something Marissa Meyer does well. Jest’s character is very telling about the grand nature of Catherine’s life ambition. At the end of the book, Jest becomes the primary catalyst for the expectations that Catherine tries to run away from. In plots like Once Upon A Time and Robin Hood starring Taron Egerton, there is a wish to take the existing world and not add differences that show a deep understanding of the world we are living in. Meyer isn’t afraid to try something that isn’t as mainstream as other renditions.
jada Davis 