Free excerpt: Marissa Meyer's Cress.

As I loved both Cinder and Scarlet, I am SO looking forward to Cress.

The excerpt is up over at USA Today, as well as a Q&A with Meyer:

Q: How is Cress similar to the Rapunzel we all know and love?

A: In the fairy tale, the prince finds Rapunzel because he hears her singing. I've taken that and given Cress this very overactive imagination that's a result of being stuck in this satellite solitary for so long. When she is in danger or in an uncomfortable situation, she goes into this imaginary world where she pretends she's an opera singer or an actress or a dancer. She has this fantasy life going on in her head that played off the original tale and how Rapunzel liked to sing.

For the most part, everything about it is happy-making, except this little bit at the end about white-washed fan casting:

Q: What's the craziest you've seen?

A: I'm not really good with celebrities, so I never really remember the names, but you see a lot of fan-casting white guys as Kai, who is Asian. That always throws me off a little bit. But they're cute! As long as they're cute …

It just reminded me of the Hunger Games Tweets stuff, and the City of Bones Magnus Bane stuff, and just YUCK. But, HEY. MAYBE THAT WON'T HAPPEN THIS TIME.

Right?

RIGHT?