Review: Cinder

Cinder by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm a fan of unique re-tellings of fairytales but this one is pretty out there!

Here we're given Cinderella with a major sci-fi twist: it's set in the future, and Cinder is a cyborg with an unknown past. Would you believe there's also a Valuable Princess who is believed dead yet would be the same age as Cinder if she were still alive? And hope lies on finding this not-dead-just-missing princess? And Cinder is just a Completely Ordinary cyborg mechanic that the Prince immediately falls in love with?

The sci-fi stuff is unique but the plot certainly isn't. It's taken the old fable we know and love and turned it into an original story that is, in fact, very similar to a multitude of fantasy novels. These novels have taught me that a car crash in which parents die is almost never actually a car crash, and that an unknown past more often than not means the person who survived the Tragic Accident is a Long Lost VIP or has Super Special Powers or even both. Hence, I was not particularly sucked in when I encountered the same story here.

That being said, the characters are fun and the sci-fi stuff does put an interesting spin on things. I much prefer my robots and cyborgs running mad and destroying things, but the science was pretty light here so I didn't mind it so much. It was a bit confusing, particularly being thrust into it so abruptly at the start, and it's hard to work out how much is normal society and how much is Cinder's cyborg-ness, but if you kinda just go with it, it's interesting enough. I wouldn't even try to figure out how all the comm systems and stuff work because I feel like a few technical holes would become apparent and I'm not committed enough to go looking for those.

Some of the writing made me cringe a little, with ridiculous reasoning and small mistakes like the 'coy' pond and the incorrect use of 'imminent'. These things, while small, always make a book seem very amateur to me, and it heavily impacts my reading experience. The less critical will easily glance over this, but for me it's one less star.

I did love the characters, though. Cinder was a pretty typical martyr, but I liked her friendship with Iko, who I wanted more of. Iko seems sassy and who doesn't love sass? I need more sass in my reading life. I hated most of Cinder's decisions, and she frustrated me a lot, but I appreciated the mechanic part of her, because she was doing something other than whining about being different. I liked Kai, and it bothered me that he put up with Cinder being so freaking moody. He's the typical Good Guy but he does also consider the fate of his people before his own selfish desires so that was refreshing. The evil step-fam could easily have been more evil; I enjoyed the nastiness but felt they were definitely not utilised properly. Queen Levana was a beautiful villain.

This book feels like a messy introduction to the series, and it's also incredibly predictable. Was absolutely not surprised by the twists, but the action does amp up towards the end and get pretty exciting. I'm looking forward to the story taking its own path in the following books, as this was all seemingly just a setup for greater things to come. It's an easy read, and I flew through it, but I'm really looking for a cleaner story, better characterisation and more action in book two to keep me invested in the series.

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