Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1) By: Marissa Meyer

Plot:

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Review:

This book has been on my to read pile for a while but I honestly kept forgetting about it. However, lately a few blogs I follow reminded me of it and I’m so glad they did.

I like a good fairy tale retelling, but there have been a lot of them recently so the market kind of feels over saturated. This book could have easily been just like every other one, but the futuristic setting, the android and cyborgs, the moon people, really set it apart.

I really enjoyed the world that was created, there was a lot of detail and it was clearly well thought out. There was a history and based on the author’s websites she had reasons for what she did and the way she termed things.

The important aspects of the Cinderella story were included as well. The step-mother was wicked, a “shoe” was left behind, and a few other important things. What I’m curious to see, though, is what will be done in the next books. The series clearly started as a Cinderella re-telling, but it didn’t end that way. There is no Happily Ever After and the girl doesn’t have the Prince/Emperor. Instead there was a twist that wasn’t really a huge surprise.

The book is YA and there were a few very YA moments where Cinder was more worried about silly teenage things and not the big issues. Still it was not overwhelmingly so and never reached annoying.

I’m really curious to see how this series develops and I look forward to reading the next book.

4.5/5