The Lunar Chronicles
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50 free The Lunar Chronicles trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles takes four familiar fairy-tale heroines and drops them into a far future of cyborgs, spaceships and a hostile kingdom on Luna. Cinder is a mechanic with a secret, Scarlet a farm girl looking for her grandmother, Cress a hacker who has never known freedom and Winter a princess living under a dangerous queen. Their stories start apart and end as one fight against Queen Levana. This quiz covers the whole series: the big twists of each novel, the crew and the villains, the rules and history of Meyer's world, the companion books Stars Above and Wires and Nerve, and how the series came to be written. It is written for readers who have finished the books and want to see how much has stuck, for book clubs and classrooms, and for anyone settling an argument about who did what. Expect spoilers for every book.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Marissa Meyer's Cinder, what does the cyborg heroine lose on the palace steps as she flees the ball?
Her foot
Her foot comes off on the stairs, an image that inspired the whole book: Marissa Meyer pictured Cinderella losing a foot instead of a shoe.
Q 02Before The Lunar Chronicles, Marissa Meyer spent ten years writing fan fiction about which 1990s anime?
Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon fan fiction taught Marissa Meyer her craft: she finished more than forty stories, many of them novel-length, before she sold a book.
Q 03What does a disguised Queen Levana feed her stepdaughter, Princess Winter, to give her the plague?
A sour apple candy
A sour apple candy, Winter's favorite treat, hides the plague, and Levana hands it over herself while dressed as an old crone. Winter faints and is kept alive in a suspension tank.
Q 04How is Queen Levana related to Cinder, the cyborg mechanic at the heart of The Lunar Chronicles?
Her aunt
Her aunt Levana is the younger sister of Cinder's mother, Queen Channary, and is believed to have tried to kill her as a small child to keep the throne.
Q 05What happens to Captain Thorne when the satellite carrying him and Cress crashes to Earth in Cress?
He goes blind
He goes blind after hitting his head in the fall, so Cress, who has spent most of her life alone in orbit, has to lead them both to safety.
Q 06In which city of the Eastern Commonwealth does Cinder work as a mechanic at a market booth?
New Beijing
New Beijing was chosen because some scholars trace the earliest Cinderella tale to ninth-century China, and Marissa Meyer wanted to honor the story's roots.
Q 07Which fairy tale inspired Cress, the third novel in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles?
Rapunzel
Rapunzel's tower becomes an orbiting satellite, and Cress keeps the famously long hair until it is cut off above her shoulders with a knife.
Q 08Which android, Cinder's loyal companion, takes the lead in Marissa Meyer's graphic novels Wires and Nerve?
Iko
Iko's personality is officially a malfunction, one that makes her forget she isn't human, and in the comics she hunts down rogue wolf-hybrid soldiers.
Q 09Cinder is revealed to be which lost Lunar princess, long believed to have died in a nursery fire?
Selene
Selene was spirited to Earth by a Lunar doctor who performed her cyborg surgery, and she grew up with no memory of her royal past.
Q 10Which fairy tale inspired Scarlet, the second novel in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles?
Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood gets a science-fiction twist: the wolf is a street fighter engineered as a soldier, and the hood is a red hoodie from her grandmother.
Q 11Which fairy tale inspired Winter, the final novel in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles?
Snow White
Snow White's evil queen got a book of her own first: Marissa Meyer set Winter aside partway through to write a whole novel about Levana's past.
Q 12Which member of Linh Cinder's adoptive family treats her as a friend, then falls ill after a junkyard trip?
Peony
Peony, the younger stepsister, catches the plague while helping Cinder look for spare parts, and Cinder later wears Peony's silver dress to the ball.
Q 13What is the name of the deadly plague that kills Emperor Rikan and sweeps Earth in The Lunar Chronicles?
Letumosis
Letumosis was once harmless to Lunars, but by the time of Cress a mutated strain has begun to kill them too.
Q 21What are Lunars called in The Lunar Chronicles if they are born without powers and cannot be mind-controlled?
Shells
Shells got their name because they are 'empty' of Lunar powers, and under Queen Channary's law they were to be killed as newborns.
Q 22Which character in The Lunar Chronicles is revealed to be Cress's father shortly before dying of the plague?
Dr. Erland
Dr. Erland is a Lunar fugitive hiding under an anagram of his real surname, Darnel, and he had believed his daughter was killed as a baby.
Q 23What is the full name behind the nickname of Cress, the hacker heroine of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles?
Crescent Moon
Crescent Moon Darnel was taken from her parents at birth, and at nine she was shut inside a satellite to spy on Earth for Luna.
Q 14In The Lunar Chronicles, what do Lunars call the illusion that lets Queen Levana appear impossibly beautiful?
Glamour
Glamour works by manipulating the bioelectricity of people nearby, so that they see, and even think, whatever a Lunar wants.
Q 15In which country does Scarlet Benoit live on her grandmother's farm, near the small town of Rieux?
France
France really does have a Rieux: the setting is based on the southern town of Rieux-Volvestre, whose name Marissa Meyer admits she mispronounced for years.
Q 16In which desert do Cress and Thorne come down after her satellite is sent plunging toward Earth?
Sahara
Sahara heat nearly kills them both before a group of travelling traders, later revealed to be Lunar traffickers, picks them up.
Q 17Which Lunar Chronicles prequel, published between Cress and Winter, tells Queen Levana's story from her teens?
Fairest
Fairest follows Levana for about ten years from the age of fifteen, and shows the cruel older sister who made her childhood a misery.
Q 18What does Prince Kai bring to Cinder's market booth to be repaired when the two first meet?
A tutor android
A tutor android is his excuse for the visit, but it secretly holds his research into a missing Lunar heir.
Q 19How do Cinder and her crew stop Emperor Kai's wedding to Queen Levana at the climax of Cress?
Kidnapping the groom
Kidnapping the groom means tranquilizing Kai and flying him away from his own palace, and Levana answers by openly declaring war on Earth.
Q 20Which palace guard, Princess Winter's childhood friend, is ordered by Queen Levana to kill her?
Jacin Clay
Jacin Clay fakes the killing by stabbing Winter's pet wolf instead, so that the queen will believe her stepdaughter is dead.
Q 24What causes the hallucinations that torment Princess Winter throughout Marissa Meyer's novel Winter?
Suppressing her powers
Suppressing her powers has cost Winter her sanity: she refuses to use her Lunar gift, and she sees the palace walls bleeding.
Q 25Which title do Queen Levana's mind-controlling courtiers, such as Aimery, hold in The Lunar Chronicles?
Thaumaturge
Thaumaturge is a real word meaning a magician, which Marissa Meyer first came across on a word-a-day calendar while she was writing Cinder.
Q 26During which month-long writing challenge did Marissa Meyer draft Cinder, Scarlet and Cress?
NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo set a target of 50,000 words in November, but Marissa Meyer wrote about 150,000, including the whole first draft of Cinder in roughly two weeks.
Q 27Which standalone Marissa Meyer novel about a villain from Alice in Wonderland is excerpted in Stars Above?
Heartless
Heartless gives the Queen of Hearts an origin story; it was sold as a two-book series but ended up as a single novel.
Q 28What relation to Wolf is Ran, the Lunar soldier who kills Scarlet's grandmother in Marissa Meyer's Scarlet?
His younger brother
His younger brother Ran first meets Scarlet as a stranger on a train, and Wolf ends up killing him when Ran hunts her down.
Q 29Which human reaction did Linh Cinder lose when she was rebuilt as a cyborg, along with blushing?
Crying
Crying is impossible because her tear ducts went when she was fitted with prosthetic eyes, though she can still sweat.
Q 30What does Queen Levana bring to Earth in Cinder to tempt Emperor Kai into marrying her?
A plague antidote
A plague antidote, just one vial of it, is her bribe; Cinder gets hold of it too late to save her stepsister and gives it to a young boy instead.