Why Carswell Thorne is Absolutely Amazing

Elise: I told you this would happen. 😉

*Note: if you do not want to read crazy, excessive fangirling, you may want to go read another post. Like this. This post will also contain spoilers for The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer.*

Anyway… The time has come. The time to talk about one of my favorite characters of all time.

Captain Carswell Thorne.

I love that GIF

He is absolutely wonderful. Amazing. *squeals* Just… Seriously. I. Love. Him.

Why? Let me count the ways…

Is there a more hilarious character in all of fiction? 

The things he says, those snarky remarks…. I just CRACK UP. Every time.

So, some examples:

“How are your eyes?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been told they’re dreamy, but I’ll let you decide for yourself.”

He’s blind at the time. Blind. And even in dire situations, he still manages to be hysterical.

And then there’s this:

“Captain,” she murmured. “I think I’m in love with you.”

An eyebrow shot up. She counted six beats of his heart before, suddenly, he laughed.

“Don’t tell me it took you two whole days to realize that. I must be losing my touch.”

Yeah, he’s a total flirt, but it’s part of his charm. His ego is huge and he’s a criminal and he flirts with literally every single girl but…his sense of humor (among other things I’ll soon mention) more than make up for it.

He may be a criminal (criminal mastermind, excuse me), but that doesn’t mean he isn’t noble. 

He was trying to help Cress while blind and still managed to think of Iko, getting her a new (human) body in the process.

In a world where cyborgs were horribly mistreated, he was A-OK with helping Cinder, a cyborg. A Lunar cyborg, for that matter.

He didn’t have any reason to stay and fight Levana after he escaped prison- but he did anyway.

His relationship with Cinder. They have the best friendship in any YA book. I love how much they annoy each other but they always fight together and help each other out.

Thorne scoffed. “Careful is my middle name. Right after Suave and Daring.”

“Do you even know what you’re saying half the time?” Cinder asked.

He may be a total flirt, but he’s really completely clueless in the romance world- and it’s absolutely adorable. 

Remember when Cress let him have it because he flirted with every girl except her? Well, it was because he really had feelings for her, and he had no idea what to do about it.

Which makes for one of the most adorable romances in the whole entire world.

Thorne is a flirt; we’ve established that. Well, Marissa established that pretty much from the moment she introduced our dear beloved Captain. And Cress, who’s, to say the least, socially awkward (she was raised alone on a satellite by an evil maniac) has a fangirl crush on him. So when they finally run into each other…

It’s not love at first sight. Ok, for her, yeah. Except for the fact that she was sorta in love with him already. But of course Carswell flirts with her and is his usually sarcastic, witty self. Even after going blind and nearly dying of hunger and thirst in the middle of the desert.

Until Winter. Chapter 70-something, I think. Go reread it right now if you’d like. That chapter. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read it.

So when Cresswell is officially a thing, we see the best side of Captain Thorne. He’s so protective and sweet and just all-around amazing to Cress. It’s just so adorable and precious and I am seriously sitting at my laptop squealing. Not kidding.

There are a thousand (or maybe even a million) more reasons why Thorne is so fabulous… But this is getting long so I’ll stop now. Tell me if you love Carswell as much as I do in the comments, and why you love him so much!

Thanks for enduring this insane amount of fangirling,

Clara