I loved the narrator, Rebecca Solar. She did a great job at being engaging, picking up the appropriate tone (especially the sarcasm!), and doing the different voices--her Iko voice was adorable! However, I don't think audiobooks are my thing. It was helpful in the care or a time I wouldn't normally be reading (basically, the car), but otherwise, it felt too passive. It was too easy to get distracted and think I was taking in the story when I really wasn't. I've had a lot of troubling with reading anything lately because it so often becomes more about reading words and flipping pages than following along--terrible, I know--so I'm trying to change how I mentally process things. (As I am with a lot of things in my life to be honest at this point.)
So, the actual book. As I mentioned earlier, I did feel like the audiobook made it harder for me to follow along so...unfortunately, that happened. However, I do think I got a pretty good grasp. But I'm also starting to feel like so far, this series is very entertaining, but I'm not completely into the world and storyline, particularly the former.
Forewarning: Due to the difficulties I had with listening to an audiobook described above, I have an embarrassing lack of details to share. Fortunately, I'm also attempting to avoid spoilers.
My main gripe is still the vague setting. This one had even less than Cinder, which at least devised a hierarchical society including cyborgs and androids, a plague, some possibly-not-correct Chinese honorifics and other shallow attempts at including the culture, some history and geography in this future, as well as the basics of the Lunars. Scarlet, on the other hand, takes place in France and aside from throwing in some French names and words, it felt like less effort was put into sketching out this society. (But it's part of the west so it's just generic, right?) In fairness, Scarlet did focus more on the Lunars, but it's frustrating that a series that wants to take place all around the world in the future doesn't do much to develop that setting.
That aside, I did enjoy Scarlet as much as Cinder, though reading them in different mediums has made them hard to compare. Scarlet did have more twists and was more unpredictable; I figured out the twist to Cinder very early on. There also seemed to be more (and quite brutal) action, and higher stakes. As with Cinder, the original fairy-tale is only weaved through so that it seems like a cheeky reference rather than the basis and then comes back to hit you unexpectedly--the "what big hands you have" scene is preserved in the most unexpected of places. It's a bit too difficult to explain how the fairy-tale impacts the story without spoilers, however, because at first it isn't what it seems.
I think I liked Cinder even more here, but I appreciated how the characters criticized the actions of each other (well, mostly Scarlet questioning Cinder near the end). Her banter with Thorne was hilarious, and I love how the narrator of the audiobook gave Thorne a constant sarcastic tone so that you took him even less seriously than you would have to begin with. Scarlet is fun but I never felt like I got a great grasp on her, however. Wolf (who is actually a reluctant street fighter) I was very pleased with--a YA male love interest of a different body type? Heck yeah! Okay, I'm obviously very biased and probably read into that (the fanart doesn't seem to agree with me, dammit), but I think I may have actually found myself really hoping they would turn out okay because I wanted their dynamic to be present in it, and it took me through several turns along the way.
I'll be reading Cress hopefully soon. I've heard it's the best so far and I'm definitely returning to print/ebook! I really feel like I missed something here, but oh well, we'll see how it goes.
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