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Book Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Cinder by Marissa Meyer, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles, is a retelling of the old poor-girl-meets-rich-prince fancy fairy tale Cinderella. And people still love re-tellings.


What does this book all have like Cinderella?
  • A vile step-mother
  • An equally vile step-sister
  • A weirdly wired girl (literally) who doesn’t fit in the societal norms
  • A prince
  • An evil queen
  • A ball
  • A glass slipper
A fairy god-mother – Oh no, this isn’t magic! It is science. Biometrics, magnetic fields, androids, communication chips, networks! So nope, there is no fairy god-mother! And yet this is a dystopian fairy tale.

126 years after the last world war, World War IV, New Beijing has to now fight a different kind of war. A city set in the Eastern Commonwealth, one of the allied ‘Earthern’ countries, is ravaged by a deadly plague that is spreading all over the world.

Prince Kai, who is a subject of much drooling of young girls, has been suddenly put in a precarious position by fate where he has to take over the reins of running his country. Luna, a country on the moon, whose inhabitants are Lunars, is threatening a war against Earth – their evil queen Levana’s infamy stems from the fact that she is so power-hungry that she has killed her own family for it.

Cinder, a cyborg, is a brilliant mechanic who owns a quaint little store in a small locality. Her guardian, who is also her step-mother, has a long lost grudge against her, making their relationship strained and pained and hateful and Cinder is planning already to run away from the place. But in a city where everyone has an installed chip inside their wrists, would it be possible for her to escape? Or is there something else planned for her?

It’s lovely to see the story shaping up. Readers can guess mystery right at the beginning, the final reveal of it still had a gasp escape from them. The book is quite imaginatively written and while a few characters aren’t well-etched just yet (maybe they would be in the next book), the protagonist’s character is very well defined. Cinder is sharp, intelligent, logical, strong and courageous.

It is lucidly written; fast paced and despite a few flaws has a very appealing and exciting plot. In the next book, people can hope to know more about Prince Kai and a few other characters, especially, a one Dr. Erland who is the royal scientist exploring antidote options for the plague.

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