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Friday, September 25, 2015

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Synopsis credit to goodreads.com

I read this book on a recommendation from my sister. At first I skeptical, but then I discovered that this book is a surprisingly easy read yet still enjoyable. If you enjoy a book that combines fantasy and sci-fi, you will enjoy "Cinder." This will be a spoiler free review.

The plot for this book is fairly simple and easy to follow. There is a sub-plot at the same time, but it does neither hinder nor really help the story at the moment (although I'm told it does later). Cinder is a cyborg mechanic who lives in New Beijing. It turns out Cinder is "special" in more ways than one and it sends her life spiraling into chaos after her sister catches the disease. There is also the arrival of Queen Levana who is trying to make herself empress, but to do so, she has to marry Cinder's love interest, Prince Kai. There's a bunch politics and war stuff that is more interesting than I make it sound. Don't worry though, it's not an awkward love triangle. Like I said, the plot is easy to follow, but kind of predictable. If I mention much more than I could give it all away. The plot was one of the highlights of the book, but the characters and romance were one of the lower points.

If you're looking for a romance filled book, this is not your thing. There is romance, but not a lot of it. It's sprinkled in with nothing scraping anything that "intense" at all. There's a few cutesy moments, but nothing that gratifying to anyone who want to see the main characters get together.

The main character of this book are Cinder and Kai, with the later being the love interest and more of a side character. There wasn't anything about Cinder that really stood out to me however in terms of personality. She was a stereotypical heroine that we see in anything sci-fi today. She was a cyborg though, but the author didn't fully play out that attribute. I would have liked to have learned more about her cyborg part like maybe how they worked. Cyborgs are a cool aspect in themselves and I hope the concept is explored more in later books. The author did a good job of writing in character descriptions and I actually had an idea of what the main character looked like. I kept on imagining her with her work gloves on. She is a bit slow in the brain though. She takes a while to make a conclusion that I'm sure most people figured out as soon as they saw the hint. I do like the way Kai is written in though.

  The author didn't just add the prince prefix to make it sound cooler, she actually wrote him like, well a prince. We saw him attend political meetings and make decisions with other country leaders. He had character quirks/habits that were recognizable and nicely reoccurring. Character quirks, in my opinion, make a character feel more real and personable.

Overall, I would give this book a 8.5 out of 10. It's an easy read and you should definitely check it out.

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