Review: Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles) - Marissa Meyer

Cinder


The first book in the Lunar Chronicles series is “Cinder” and it is based on “Cinderella”. The book is set in the far future with space ships, mind controlling people living on the moon and cyborgs. Cinder is a cyborg, meaning that she is part human, part robot. When she was a kid, she was in an accident and to save her, scientists fitted her body with wiring and computer parts. 

Cyborgs are considered less than human, and as Cinder was orphaned in the accident, she now lives with a family, whose mother uses her as a servant. 

One day when Cinder is working in her booth at the market, she meets the crown prince, who is coming to her to get his android fixed. This meeting sets off the chain of events that make up the plot of the book. 

I won’t go into further details about the plot, as I don’t want to spoil anyone. I will say that I felt like it moved along quite slowly. I don’t know why, as there weren’t really any lulls, everything was pretty interesting as far as world building, backstory and characterization went. Maybe it was the fact that the book is set with a rather large type, so it felt like I had read so many pages, but nothing had really happened, because it actually wasn’t that many words on each page, if that makes sense?


As for the characters, I liked Cinder, even though I thought she was a little hard to grasp sometimes. She would be crushingly shy one moment and then so confident the next, sassing people out, but then becoming super shy again. It just felt a little weird, that she switched between behaviors like that. The crown prince Kai seemed a bit superficial. Meaning that I didn’t really feel like I got to know him. He is a crown prince, but he seems to be quite unconcerned with his responsibilities, in a way I feel isn’t quite realistic. Then there was also a bit of insta-love, especially on his side, which I can never seem to look past. There was a bit of it from Cinder as well, but I thought hers was somehow more understandable, as she would have been familiar with him at least from TV and such. 

I really liked Iko, Cinder’s “sidekick”. She was fun and sassy, and though she was a droid, I felt like she had one of the best personalities around. 

I gave this book 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads. 

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