Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)by Marissa Meyer
Published by Square Fish
Paperback (purchased)
YA, retelling, sci-fi, romance, dystopia
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.
Cinder's strong point was definitely the amazing world-building and Meyer's writing style. It's fast paced, thrilling, and just keeps going, and it does not feel like you're reading a long book. There's very detailed description of the world, and many aspects of it, which I absolutely loved. Meyer knows how to build a fantasy world, which is unique, still has the fairy tale feeling, and how to describe it to make it feel real.
However, I did not connect with the characters the way I wanted. Cinder was a smart, hard working and witty main character, but something did not click and while I liked her, I wasn't truly enchanted with her, and I didn't feel her anguish. It didn't help that the love interest, Prince Kai, was boring. He's the crown prince, the future emperor, he should be powerful and great, and have charm and character. However, he lacked all of that. He was just a boy, not a great leader or charming in any way. Mostly he was just boring, which was very disappointing for me. I truly hope Kai will have lots of character development in the other books, because otherwise I'm not going to get along with him. The other obvious disappointment was how little Cinder and Kai had chemistry. There was no chemistry and the romance felt so forced that I cringed many times while reading. Overall, none of the characters made me care about them, so the story felt a flat for me. I see all the potential, and I will continue with the series. Cinderella has never been my favourite fairy tale, so I will give Meyer a chance to make me love her other characters.
Overall Cinder was a good reading experience, and it has so much potential. I just couldn't care about the characters and the big twists of the story were predictable. Meyer has a great potential, and I live in hope that she'll sweep my feet underneath me with the next installment of the chronicles, Scarlet.
3 of 5 stars.
Cinder on Goodreads.
a bit sad to see that you only gave it 3 stars but I understand that Cinder can be hard to relate to at times. are you going to read the next one?
ReplyDeleteI was a bit sad about that too, I was depating to give Cinder four stars because I did love the world-building, idea and Meyer's writing style. I did continue with the series, and oh boy did I devour Scarlet! My review of that is coming up today, and Scarlet definitely had everything I wished Cinder to have :)
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