Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Of the many things I had heard about this book before reading it, most were raving reviews encouraging others to pick up this book and after reading it, I can not only say that I can see why, but I can also say that I am now part of that group. Cinder was such an amazing book to read and if you take anything from this review, it should be that.

Si-fi is one of the genres that I get on least well with and from the blurb of this book I worried that this book would be completely taken up with those aspects and that I would be overwhelmed by it all, but that was not the case. This book also had elements of romance, fantasy and a dystopian universe in which everything was different, yet it was the same as well. I was immediately taken in by the new world and characters.

This is the first book I have read where one of the protagonists is a cyborg and I personally think that it added so much to the book. It reflected today's society in the fact that Cinder was an absolutely brilliant person with a huge skill set, but none of that mattered to other people when they knew what she was; a cyborg. It is the same today in aspects of our lives and it's a real shame. By having Cinder's viewpoints on this at the forefront of our minds throughout the whole book it gave a different, yet still valuable, look at what she was experiencing.

Prince Kai was a character who I had to grow to like. At first I found him arrogant and the way it was described as 'all the girls in New Beijing liking him' put me off him quite a bit. Even though this is a completely different concept, I first imagined him as the guy in school that we all know who is more full of himself than a can of baked beans (obviously before they have been opened). Over the course of the book though, he proved himself to me through his actions and how he didn't always like being too serious; I think that more world leaders could do with adding sarcasm to their vocabulary. Then he had to ruin it by acting the way he did when he found out that Cinder was a cyborg. I seriously hope that was all an act or else I won't be able to forgive him.

Maybe the thing that I liked most about this book was how it played on the fairytale of Cinderella. From the evil step-mother to the looming ball to losing her foot on the staircase, it all just added something extra to a fairytale that I already loved. Incorporating it into the modern world was also something that I think was carried out flawlessly. Obviously more had to be added to the story to embellish it and there were some things that had to be changed to make the story work, but overall it was sublime.

The Lunar's are a race that intrigue me greatly. I really want to find out more about their back-story and their involvement with the people of Earth more than I want to find out about World War IV or anything like that. The little we got told in this book was a large enough taste for the moment, but in the next books in the series, I really want to learn more about them because they seem to be a very interesting, and deadly, group of people.

The only thing that I could nitpick about this book was the fact that as soon as I knew Cinder was a Lunar, I also knew that she would be the missing princess, even though that wasn't specifically written down. It was just a bit too obvious for my liking, but apart from that, I have no complaints.

I cannot wait to get my hands on the next book now, though I might rust from anticipation before then. (I'm so proud that I got that pun in there, you have no idea.)

(Goodreads parallel)