 The story is loosely based on the fairy tale of "Rapunzel", similar to its predecessors "Cinder" and "Scarlet" which were loosely based on "Cinderella" and "Little Red Riding Hood" respectively.The novel begins with an introduction to Crescent "Cress" Moon Darnel, a sixteen-year-old girl living in a satellite in space that has been her prison for most of her life.She is contacted by Cinder, the main protagonist of the first novel, and her crew on Thorne's spaceship, the Rampion, through the D-COMM chip that had made Nainsi malfunction in the first book (she is the same girl that warned Cinder about Levana's ulterior motives of marrying Kai).