Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Read: March 25-30, 2012

read in 5 days

pages: 387

Hmm, where to begin...Well the cover caught my attention first so I pulled it off the shelf and read the jacket. Cyborg? Sure I'm interested in Sci Fi stuff and its in the young adult so its like a two for one, oh and for good measure throw in some dystopic themes which works for me. Not just any run of the mill story about a cyborg though, let's throw the Cinderella theme in there as well. Wait a minute, a cyborg Cinderella? Ok now I'm intrigued. You got me. I'm taking the book home and seeing what is going on here.

*****Spoiler Alert*****

The novel takes us into the future where we have encountered two more world wars and have managed to maintain peace for 126 years, yet there seems to be a looming threat of a new war with the Lunar people if an agreement is not met soon. The Earth has been divided up into these 6 countries, and the story takes place in the Eastern Commonwealth. While there are some subtle hints of this there are no real cultural references to set the story firmly in the East. Which makes me wonder if this was done to make it seem as though the story could take place anywhere or if the world had been so ravaged by two additional world wars that maybe things have become so mixed and more an amalgamation of what was once more definite.

As I mentioned there is a cyborg, and while the Eastern Commonwealth and the Earth for that matter are peopled with some cyborgs only one is introduced, the main character Cinder. There are also androids rolling around being useful, but here again we only see two. And we have the Cinderella theme with a slight twist going on over everything that is happening. The mean step mother who treats Cinderella like a work slave, which in this case Cinder really is property of the step mother with government papers to prove it, rather than just being a step daughter. There are two step sisters, though neither is ugly and in fact one is very sweet and actually cares for Cinder.

There is the threat of war and the plague Letumosis. We the disease actually comes from Lunar. The presence of Lunar people on Earth is causing havoc and killing the people of Earth even while there is the threat of war from the Lunar people should an agreement and union not take place. There is only a tentative peace at the moment. And likely this will come up with the next novel and drive it. I wonder though could there really be anything more to the Cinderella thing, because the Prince is there and all the other aspects, but we've played the story out. Whats left? Where will this go? A new fairy tale or just continue off on its own. This is what I'd like to see but I can't get anything from the title thus far and have to wait til 2013 for the next novel. That's what I get for reading current novels. Should always wait to start a series til it looks like it is complete and all published. The waiting for the next book always stinks!

While there are details lacking as to who the Lunars are, how they got to the moon and how they travel exactly to the Earth. What the heck Letumosis is and what are the symptoms. What were the causes of the last two world wars and who was involved. No real development of the world outside of how it directly affects the characters, and really this could have been even more Sci Fi had all this been explained, but it was fine for me as it was. For a hard core Sci Fi reader this will fall very short of what they would want to read I think. But the audience seems more to be aimed at teen girls as there is the Princess theme and the romance of Cinder and Kai. The romance I have to say is something that kept me interested because it was not gushy and sappy. I'll be interested to see where the rest of the story goes as we are not left with a very satisfactory close to this novel. Got to love cliffhangers!