Wires, and nerve, and Iko, oh my!
Wires and Nerve by Marissa Meyer takes place after The Lunar Chronicles series ends and follows everyone’s favorite andriod, Iko. Even though Levana’s rule has ended, her mutant soldiers still walk the earth and cause more attacks on civilians. Iko decides to take the job of corralling the soldiers back to the Luna with the help of a few members from the Rampion crew and one of Cinder’s handsome guards.
Before Wires and Nerve, I haven’t really read any graphics novels. However, I’m a huge fan of The Lunar Chronicles world and will pretty much read anything that Marissa Meyer writes that takes place in it. After being slightly disappointed with Stars Above, I didn’t go into Wires and Nerve with incredibly high expectations. Even though there are some aspects of this book that I would change, I overall enjoyed this graphic novel and plan on reading its next installment.
The highlight of this book definitely lies with Iko as the main character. Although she is one of the heroes of the Lunar Revolution, we never really see her perspective in the original series and she acts more as a cute and fun side character. With her bubbly personality, incredible fashion sense, and the only android character, it was nice to finally see her perspective. In this book, Iko’s voice really stands out and readers get a more complex look at her character, especially the discrimination she faces as an android.
Another aspect of this story that I enjoyed was how easy and enjoyable it was to read. I read Wires and Nerve within a couple of hours in only one sitting. The story is very easy to follow and it was very fun to have more adventures with characters from one of my favorite series. Although some readers may not enjoy the primarily blue and red artwork throughout the novel, especially since some of the character may not look like how they pictured, I really enjoyed it. Since I’m not a huge reader of graphic novels, seeing such a familiar world made me really interested in reading more graphic novels outside of The Lunar Chronicles world.
That being said, there were a few things that I loved in the original Lunar Chronicles series that I found missing in the graphic novel. The first being that some of the original characters seemed a little out of character in the graphic novels series. Besides Iko, we mostly see Thorne and Cress from the original nine characters. While Thorne felt more true to his personality, for some reason, Cress seemed a little bit off to me. Cress always felt more comfortable in dresses, so it surprised me that the artists outfitted her in a loose fitting shirt and cargo pants throughout the whole novel. While Cress does get more brave throughout the original series, her boldness as well as some of her dialogue seemed a little off to me.
One minor complaint that I have with this novel is the romance. Iko’s love interest, Kinney, was introduced in Winter. Unfortunately, I feel like his character never really develops any more in this novel. Iko and Kinney definitely have a love-hate relationship, especially since Kinney struggles to see Iko as more than an android. Even we’re told Kinney is a good guy due to his loyalty to Cinder, I never see this in his actions, especially towards Iko. Whenever Iko and Kinney finally have “a moment” in the book, it really comes out of nowhere and it wasn’t something that I anticipated like I did with the other couples in the series. Hopefully, Kinney and his relationship with Iko develop more in the next installment.
Another issue that I had with this book was the plot and the pacing. In the original series, readers are offered multiple points of view throughout the story that hint at different story lines or make the story line at hand more complex. Even though we are offered multiple perspectives in this book, I found it not as successful as in the original series. In this graphic novel, I felt like the multiple perspectives told me what happened because it actually occurred in the novel, which took away an element of surprise. Additionally, I didn’t see as many layers to the plot as the original series which made the book a little boring at times.
Overall, Wires and Nerve is a great book for fans of The Lunar Chronicles. I definitely would recommend reading the original series before picking up this one in order not to spoil any outcomes for the original series and to understand the language and plot used within this book better. Since I really enjoyed reading about Iko and the graphic novel format, but had some characterization and plot issues, I give this book four out of five stars.
Beauty and the Bean Boots 