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. (From Goodreads)
One of my guest reviewers, Caralyn, actually already reviewed Cinder for ItBW. But I recently picked it up and I just wanted to share a few thoughts. If you want to read Caralyn's review that goes a bit more in depth you can find it HERE.
Total honesty time: I had no desire to read this book. Cinderella is an overdone, overrated fairy tale. And I'm not particularly a fan of cyborgs. So I spent a year actively not reading this book. Even though I have not heard anything less than raving about Cinder, I was pretty convinced it wasn't for me. So why did I actually pick it up? Hard to say. Mostly out of curiosity. I also got pretty excited when I realized Scarlet was a Red Riding Hood retelling and that next up was Cress - Rapunzel and then a Snow White retelling. Even better - all these characters come together. So I finally read it.
Or devoured it, is probably more accurate. This book is spectacular. Like, whoa. I'm so impressed at the way Marissa Meyer pulled this off. Because when you step back and look, what she did was take on a massive project. This is futuristic politics, colonies on the moon, cyborgs, and all these things had to twist into the familiarity of the Cinderella story. I was skeptical, and I regret that a bit. If you're only looking at the surface, this is just straight up a compelling and well-written story. It's easy to lose track of time with this book.
I'm just really glad I gave Cinder a chance. There's a reason people rave about it.
