Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles book #1) by Marissa Meyer

                                               

 Title: Cinder

                                                                   Author: Marissa Meyer

                                                                   Pages: 387 

                                                                   Published: January 3rd 2013, by Penguin Group 

                                                                   Series: The Lunar Chronicles book #2

                                                                   Genre: YA

                                                                   Stars: 4/5 stars

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. 

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.

                                             ***This review will contain no spoilers***

At first I was actually apprehensive when knowing about this book, it didn’t sound like my cup of tea. But I can assure you, Cinder was totally amazing and I am really glad I’ve read it J I’m now reading the second book, Scarlet.

So Cinder is basically based on the original fairy tale Cinderella, but obviously with twists and turns. It’s set in the future in New Beijing where androids and cyborg exists, Cinder being a cyborg. They are seen as the lowest of the rank starting from the humans.

I absolutely adored Cinder. I thought she was really brave and genuine. After her accident when she was little, she got turned into a cyborg in order to keep her alive but she hates it.  Mostly because she’s looked down on from the humans. She wants to be treated like a normally girl, but liked and go to the ball, but she doesn’t have that and instead just carries on her life as practically being a servant to her adopted family, mainly her adoptive mother and older adoptive sister. Despite everything that has happened to her, she has a strong backbone and I admire that of her.

I also liked Iko, who is an android, Cinder’s family so-called servant and most importantly Cinder’s friend. The reason why I liked her is because despite being a robot, she had a personality chip unlike any other android which made her act like a teenage girl, something that Cinder needed, being without any friends. She made the book lively.

Of course, we cannot exclude Prince, or King Kai. Such an adorable, down to earth guy and both he and 

Cinder suited perfectly.

I thought the whole plot was awesome, so different from the original story. I of course like the villain not being Cinder’s adoptive mother, but an actual queen from the moon planet (yes the moon is now a planet). The inhabitants living there are called Lunars and the majority of them have magic. They can control what people see, feel and do and they are kind of evil. They are very manipulative and cunning and now the Queen Levana (the villain and who control her own people to obey her, since they abhor her) once to control earth and its people. She sets out to get married to Kai.

Of course, Cinder gets in the way and many shocking juicy secrets reveal itself.

Now reading the second book, I can see how well Marissa planned this whole series, since there are things that she had mentioned in Cinder that made sense in the second book. And I’m pretty sure the things in the second book will make sense in the next two books to come. Ahhh, I love it when books are linked to one another.

I also love the fact that Marissa is using very big fairy tale characters together as an alliance. I think she’s doing it pretty well. The second book is about Red Riding Hood, the third book is about Rapunzal and the fourth book is about Snow White. 

All in all, an awesome book.

Notable quotes/passages:

“Even in the Future the Story Begins with Once Upon a Time.” 

“I know this is stupid, but part of me felt like if I could come see you today, if I could convince you to go with me tonight, then maybe I could still change things. It's dumb, I know. It's not like Levana cares if I, you know, might have actual feelings for someone.”