Stefani K. (stef140) reviewed on 3/28/2012 + 28 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

Have you ever sat down and thought, how can I make a classic fairy tale even better? How can I reimagine it? No? Well, Marissa Meyer has and she did just that. In this reimagining of Cinderella, we meet Cinder. She is a cyborg and the region's best mechanic during a volatile time when plague is running rampant through the world. She does have an evil stepmother, or in this case adopted mother, and two stepsisters though only one of them is evil. When one of her sisters becomes ill, she finds herself at the heart of a battle to save her, a stepmother who wants to get rid of her, and a prince who needs her help. What is a cyborg to do?

The characters in this novel are absolutely riveting. They are imaginative and natural. You want to know more about these people. You have Prince Kai who is witty, sarcastic, charming, but can be a bit pushy when he wants to get his way. Cinder is intelligent and bright and seems to shrug off her burdens and not let them get to her. You even have Iko, an android who is more expressive and amusing than the human or partly human characters. But these characters are never really explored to their full potential. The fact that Cinder is a cyborg is just taken at face value and we never fully explore what that means. Does she still have human emotion? Is it all artificial intelligence? Does she consider herself to be still human? We never get the answers to those questions and it disappointed me.

The world Meyer has created is full of possibility. There is the possiblity of war with the evil Lunar Queen who wants to take over the Eastern Commonwealth in any way she can. There is the possibility that the Prince is falling in love with a cyborg, who has secrets not even she knows exist, without realizing it. You have a community with a fear and prejudice against cyborgs and has deemed they are not really human. But again, we only get to scratch the surface of these things and not explore them fully. I have no idea why this world is that way or why these things are facts. Why is there tension with the Lunars? Why is there such a prejudice against cyborgs when they have fully integrated androids into their society? I don't know and I wanted to know.

In the end, I really enjoyed this book. I was engaged with it and wanted to see where it went. I was excited to see what secrets the book would hold. The only thing that prevented me from rating it higher is that certain aspects of the book were painfully predictable and that the possibilities for this world were not explored to the extent I would have liked to see.

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