Cinder

I don't know what I was hoping for. To be honest, I was excited by the premise: a cyborg Cinderella story. Androids, the future, why people living on the moon! Fascinating!

Unfortunately, Cinder lacks subtlety. It's a good story, in the sense that I think Transformers good as a popcorn conveyance, but it doesn't have lasting appeal. There are no strong surprises, and the surprises that do exist are ruined, in large part, because the author foreshadows an event so strongly that she practically gives the surprises away. More than once I found myself saying, "I saw that coming."

And this speaks nothing of the setting. China, in the future. A world that has seen its fourth world-war. Cramped living quarters, vague hints of an economic collapse... but the settings don't live up to the action. I didn't feel that I was in China, even a futuristic China. The few hints of economic hardship or extreme population density are seemingly thrown in without rhyme or reason, without fitting into the greater narrative. It isn't exactly jarring, but doesn't help with the believability of the story.

This is simply a quick read, but one that leaves you empty, and wanting more.

I was a touch wary of this. A retelling of Cinderella where Cinderella was a cyborg and a mechanic, set in a Beijing of the future with a weird (potentially dystopian?) government, moon colonies, and also a mysterious (potentially apocalyptic?) disease? It sounded like too many things put together. How on earth could something like this actually turn out to be worth reading?

Apparently, like this.

I love fairy tale retellings. One of the things I love about them is the feeling I get when I know what is going to happen, but I have no clue how. I love the process of ticking off those boxes of the basic Cinderella story. In any given retelling, you generally have a deserving but not high class girl, an evil stepmother, some questionable stepsisters, a ball, a prince (ideally one worth winning), a lost slipper, a fairy godmother, and a coach that is not what it seems. All of these elements don't need to be there, certainly, and it is often very difficult to sneak all of them in while retaining a veneer of originality, but there needs to be enough that it is recognizable, even if just barely, as the same story. It is a difficult job, honestly, to balance things just right, and as a sincere fan of the genre, I often am generous in my definition of "original," as well as in my definition of "interesting."

This book did not need any extra generosity. And no, I am not telling you which boxes it ticked, because that would take away half the fun.

Cinder herself was easy to root for and empathize with. She had the agency that a lot of Cinderellas lack, and I love to see that. She had interests and talents and a desire to escape that I don't often see in this story, and she even had a female friend to support her, albeit of an odd variety. She was spunky. I felt like a more modern telling of this story, and not just because it was set in a future time period.

I would like to state that I saw the reveal of


Cinder as the lost Lunar princess super early. That doesn't strictly bother me, but since that was such a divergence from the classic tale (and thus not guessable going in), it would have been nice to have been longer in suspense there.




I appreciated the building of a relationship between Cinder and Prince Kai, since I have never really enjoyed the "love at first sight" concept so prevalent in fairy tales. (That is probably at least partly why I love retellings so much, actually.) Kai was an intriguing character in his own right, and, while certainly not perfect, was fun to get to know. I appreciate that he was clever and driven to do right by his people, whatever he needed to sacrifice for that to happen.

There was a thread of something I felt like I should recognize throughout, yet I could not pinpoint. When, in the acknowledgments, Marissa Meyer gives a shout-out to "Sailor Moon fandom geeks," I finally realized what it was. And I loved that.

The entirety of the Lunar people and their politics was fascinating. It felt both very sci-fi and very classic fairy tale. I can't wait to hear more about them. I will be picking up the rest of the books in the series and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.