Cinder

Cinder

Marissa Meyer

Here's one that got a lot of hype. One of everyone's favorite stories, Cinderella, that has plenty of re-tellings. Except, in this futuristic setting, Cinder is a cyborg.

She can't remember anything past her 11th birthday when she got into a hover accident with her parents and barely survived. Thanks to surgery, her hand and foot are now robotic limbs... but cyborgs are half-robot so that makes them less than human, right? Apparently so, even though that makes no sense to me. There was no justification for this, just that because they are part machine makes them not human (even though they have the human capacities that the brain allows but, yanno, whatever). So, as usual, she has an evil guardian and stepsister(s) (one of them isn't evil) and she's a mechanic. And there's a plague on Earth that's now expanding to 'New Beijing' (their city).

First of all, the Asian components really made me mad. The new countries of Earth were minimally explained, other than that they live in New Beijing... which should be China, right? Because almost any of the Asian elements were Japanese and I don't think that would sit so well with either country. Disregarding that, the characters were still very bland. I felt like none of the characters had any sort of personality, except for the one robot introduced (ironic?). I just didn't care too much. I liked Cinder, but not enough. And how oblivious could you be? The main 'twist' was way too obvious, so much so that I felt like the book dragged on because I realized the plot about 50 pages in to the 400(ish) page book. I also was not feeling the chemistry between Kai and Cinder, there were no sparks at all. And Kai!!! I mean, you're the Emperor's son. I'm pretty sure that most heirs are raised to know policies and customs and common decency. But no, he just mouths off to everyone and anyone without thinking of consequence. He's just too immature for me.

Luckily, I'm a hopeless romantic so Cinderella is up my alley. I will admit that it was entertaining. I read it in two days so it couldn't be too bad. I believe the series has potential to be much better now that the Cinderella storyline is pretty much complete. Girl meets boy, goes to ball, loses foot, maybe now it can stop being predictable. Hopefully.