Book Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

cin-DER!!! cin-DER!!!  I sing it in the streets!

And although some will look at me strangely, for using my ‘awe-inspiring’ voice to proclaim a pyroclastic material, which is igneous rock. I will sing louder my praises, “cin-DER!!!”

Now that I’m done singing about rocks, I would like to venture on to the topic of books. Cinder by Marissa Meyer, is a book I have recently read. I read it because of a book club on YouTube I sadly could not attend. But thank goodness I read it, because then I wouldn’t be able to have swallowed up the awesome-sauce that this book was.

 

Cinder is the debut novel for Marissa Meyer, and is also the first in her series entitled, ‘The Lunar Chronicles’. Which contains 3 more books, the next one scheduled to come out in 2013.

The book is very loosely based on the fairytale of Cinderella. It keeps some of the main plot points of the original, but diverges in curious and fantastical ways. One of these being that the main character, whose name is Cinder, is in fact a cyborg. This is the fact that attracted me to this book. I’ve never read a book involving robots, before. And I was intrigued by the added bonus of this being a fairytale adaptation.

As you could imagine, with the presence of cyborgs, this novel is placed in a dystopian world; in the future. It is very modern, and yet still retains a lot of the world today. There is romance, money troubles, pollution, and mean step-mothers.

My favorite things about this book, is that I couldn’t put it down. I was forced to read it, the story drawing me in more than any other book has in a long time. The characters are unique, interesting and fun. The story is fresh, and so easy to enjoy.

However, looking back I can see there are some flaws. The New Beijing, in which the story took place. Doesn’t really have any Beijing-ness to it. There was a  lack of definition given to the landscape, and so the setting could have been anywhere. Also the themes and issues in this book, were only lightly touched. In this way the novel is superficial, but let’s be honest those are sometimes the best to read.

And that is why I’m giving this book 5 out of 5. Because it was so enjoyable and easy to read, that any of its flaws didn’t matter, because I couldn’t see them while I was in this book. I really like this book and will be reading the next in the series, Scarlet. I absolutely cannot wait!