Cinder by Marissa Meyer is so much more than a reimagining of your classic Cinderella. Cinder is a sixteen-year-old mechanic, a cyborg, outcast and the bane of her stepmother’s existence. Cinder became a cyborg when she was eleven-years-old and remembers nothing of her childhood.
All Cinder wants is to be free–free to make her own decisions and to live her own life. Instead she is stuck providing for a family who barely tolerates her. Her job as a mechanic throws her in the path of the prince of New Beijing, Prince Kai. She is tasked with fixing his android, Nancy, but she finds that the android is anything but ordinary.
Interrupting this task, Cinder’s sister, Peony, comes down with a terrible plague with a 100% mortality rate. At this news, Cinder’s stepmother offers Cinder up as a lab rat in the hopes of finding a cure–an appointment that always ends in death. But the scientists soon find out that Cinder is more than meets the eye.
Will Cinder succumb to the plague? Will Peony survive? Will whatever Prince Kai is hiding be enough to halt an inevitable Lunar invasion? And where does Cinder come into all of this?
I’m not going to lie, I was super skeptical going into this one. @sophiethestark convinced me to give it a go–you can check out her review here. Still, because I was skeptical, I decided to checkout the audiobook and I’m glad I did. I’d heard mixed reviews about this first book in the series and I wonder if I might have felt the same way if I read the book. Regardless, the audiobook was definitely the way to go for me.
Cinder is a YA reimagining of Cinderella in the loosest sense of the term. This story takes place in the future among cyborgs and spaceships; there are androids and a race of people who live on the moon. The story itself starts out pretty slow, with not a lot of meat but soon the plot evolves and the pace picks up.
I feel like this is a book that is meant to set the stage for more. There isn’t a lot to it but you can tell there is a lot to come; hints toward future story arcs and bits and pieces for you to tuck away for later.
I keep thinking of what else I should say about this book but if I am being honest, not much comes to mind. Don’t get be wrong, it was an entertaining listen. I finished the audio book in just a few days, which means I listened to it in the car, while cooking, getting dress, you get the picture. I’d say check out @sophiethestark’s review if you want a review of the written book as for the audio, it was very well done and kept my interest all the way through.
This one gets 3.5 stars from me. A fun, entertaining read that you can easily get sucked in to.
That’s all for now!
-M-