Cinder: Marissa Meyer

Cinder is a new look at an old fairytale: Cinderella. The author does an amazing job at keeping the basic components of the story (an orphan taken in by a horrible family, handsome prince, and so on) in place, while making the plot and characters themselves entirely different. I loved that, though the city and the world wasn’t widely discussed, I’ve finished the book with a pretty good idea of the society and it’s inhabitants.

The setting was New Beijing which is interesting in itself because there are traditional elements worked into the speculative. I loved how the author created a new history and fitted so many traditional science fictional elements into the story (hover cars anyone?).

Character and plot wise: AWESOME. I’m not going to say too much but you have a bad ass Cinderella and the necessary hot prince (in this case, Emperor) and a plot that kept me reading until I finished. This was a one sitting read ,so clear your schedule and settle down!

Apart from the great story and well developed characters, I was particularly interested in the political underpinnings involved in the book. This is what I’m writing my thesis on, when human becomes non human and when non-human in turn becomes human, and Cinder herself was an interesting example. She is a cyborg, born human with mechanical prosthetic elements, and simply being a cyborg comes with a stigma, she is considered non-human. There are also androids, including Cinder’s friend (robots name) who came cheap because of a ‘programming defect’. I’m going to stop nerding out on you guys now but seriously, this book had some heavy background to it’s general awesomeness.

The only thing I disliked about this fantastic book was the fact that it’s the first in a series and I have to wait ages to get the next one and find out what happens next! L xoxo

Received from publisher via NetGalley. Thanks!