Cinder - All Dressed in Metal?

Even in the future, the story begins with Once Upon A Time...

Title: Cinder (Book 1 of the Lunar Chronicles)
Author: Marissa Meyer 
Publisher: Macmillian Publishers
Release Date: January 3, 2012


I have a thing for retelling of fairy tales right now which is why my next review is a retelling of yet another old classic from a Disney childhood. So lets head back in time or should I say into the future as we dive into the next Tale of a Book Nerd.

Having been asked to do Cinder by a couple of people I'm going to be completely honest about how I felt while reading the book. While Cinder wasn't my favorite read it still had a lot going for it. I gave Cinder the chance the same time I had gotten Splintered and read it at the same time. Bad habit of mine reading multiple books at once.

Cinder takes place in the future in the city of New Beijing. Within New Beijing a mysterious disease is killing both humans and cyborgs alike. Cinder is one of the city's cyborgs and is an amazing mechanic as well. Not bad for being a 16 year old cyborg. Cinder lives in the city with her stepmother and stepsisters. The novel opens up with Cinder at the market where she works as the mechanic to help support her family (notice her stepmother and stepsister's don't work); while at the market she is approached by none other than Prince Kai. Prince Kai is heir to the throne and will ascend the throne fairly quickly in the novel as the Emperor has been struck by the disease and will die from it like everyone else.

Cinder's younger step-sister Peony is also stricken with the disease, so her step-mother Adri, volunteers Cinder for the cyborg draft to help discover the cure. The cyborgs who are drafted don't come back alive either.

While being injected by the androids and the human Dr. Erland, they discover that Cinder is immune to the disease and can't catch it. While Cinder is being poked and prodded and still working for her step-mother after a deal has been struck between her and Erland, Prince Kai has his own problems in the palace. The Lunar Queen Levana is out to marry the prince and to take over the world. Queen Levana is a blood thirsty foe, having killed her entire family including the heir apparent, the Princess Selene; who the world believes is alive.

Many Lunar people try to escape the Moon and live on Earth in disguise but most don't survive the journey. The Lunar people are immune to the disease because they are the ones who brought the disease to Earth.

Towards the end of the novel Cinder is arrested by Levana and is thrown into jail for being a Lunar person who is living on Earth. Cinder breaks out of jail and starts living her life as a fugitive.

Overall I give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars. It didn't really capture or hold my attention as well as I thought it would. I will give it the props of it doing a wonderful job of retelling Cinderella and I will read Scarlet just to see how things turn out but I feel that it was missing something, such as the extra wow factor. I would also like to fault it for being easy enough to guess what was supposed to be the major plot twist early on in the book.

So that brings us to the end of the review. I didn't want to spoil anything for anyone so this review was a bit harder to write. So what all is in store for both Kai and Cinder throughout the rest of the novel. For that you need to read "Cinder" and to discover what happens to Cinder after breaking out of jail I need to read "Scarlet". Til the Next Tale of  a Booknerd.

-Brian