Review: Cinder

Author: Marissa Meyer

Series:The Lunar Chronicles

Genre: YA, Sci-Fi, fantasy, retelling

Rating: 4/5

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. Goodreads

Yes! I finally read this.

I had initially hesitated to write this review, as everyone seemed to have already read this book, and I felt no one would really care to read this review! However, I want to share my thoughts on this real bad, so I thought, fuck it, I’ll go ahead.

I LOVED the premise. The idea of combining a fairy tale with Sci-Fi was so new and refreshing, and one thing I especially liked was how true the character of Cinder was to Cinderella. In Disney’s Cinderella, she is subject to a lot of ill-treatment by her stepmother, but all the same she remains mostly upbeat and optimistic an makes the best of the situation. Like Cinderella, I felt Cinder was a rather passive lead to whom things happened, rather than who caused things to happen, but I felt that was okay. Stories are often like that, and I don’t find that bothersome in the first book in series. The New Beijing setting, and Cinder being a mechanic were other refreshing aspects to the book.

I also adored the friendship between Iko the android and Cinder. Iko was such an adorable character!

Coming to Prince Kai, I thought he was an okay sort of character. I do find him attractive, but I also felt he was a bit weak and immature. I was glad that the romance did not take away too much of the plot.

I felt that the writing was rather unremarkable, but the book was so addictive that I did not really notice that at first. Also, there were a lot of predictable tropes-the big reveal about Cinder in the end was rather obvious from around midway of the book.

The story makes up for all that, though. The writer did a fantastic job of combining all the various elements-the lunar nation, the concept of lunars, the letumosis plague, the concept of cyborgs being second class citizens etc. I have a feeling this would only get better as it continues, so I am going to definitely pick up Scarlet as soon as possible.