Listen To An Excerpt HERE
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Marissa
Meyer lives in Tacoma, Washington. Cinder is her debut novel. Author information can also
be found at marissameyer.com.
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:
(This synopsis comes from the book jacket.) “Even in the future, the
story begins with Once Upon a Time…
Humans
and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Bejing. 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…
Sixteen-year-old
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class
citizen with a mysterious past and is reviled by her stepmother. 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. Because there is something unusual about Cinder,
something that others would kill for.”
FORMAT/INFO: Cinder is 387 pages
and has thirty-eight chapters. The narration is third-person and provides
Cinder’s perspective primarily, though there are several instances in
which we are shown Prince Kai’s
viewpoint. This book offers the beginning of a quartet of books called The
Lunar Chronicles.
Cinder
was published in
hardcover by Feiwel & Friends
on January 3, 2012. The UK version was published on January 5, 2012 via Puffin Books.
ANALYSIS: While Cinder reflects its
fairy tale origins (deceased father figure, cruel stepmother, an overworked,
grimy heroine, and an impending ball with a handsome prince), the book has
unexpected layers to its plot and characters. One of the main departures
from its roots is the book’s science-fiction slant. Cinder is a cyborg,
and references to data input and internal system alerts (such as the blinking
orange light that notifies her when someone is lying) are woven fairly seamlessly
into the narrative. Other futuristic mainstays—like multi-use androids and
hover crafts—make their appearance throughout the book, but the heart of the
story rests in its characters.
Cinder is well-known for her skill as a
mechanic and despite the prejudice that is shown toward cyborgs, she has a
steady business that provides her family’s only income. I use the word
family loosely. Her stepmother, Adri, alternately ignores and
verbally abuses her, all the while heaping any “fix-it” chores on top of Cinder’s
work responsibilities. Only one of her two stepsisters shows her any
affection, and Adri limits their interaction. Adri blames Cinder
for the death of her husband, Garan, the man who adopted the orphaned
cyborg against his wife’s wishes. Not long after traveling abroad to bring
Cinder to live with them, Garan became ill with letumosis, a
deadly disease that strikes seemingly without rhyme or reason and for which a
cure is being desperately sought. Despite her circumstances, Cinder
does not wallow in despair. Her relationship with a household droid
reveals her optimistic nature, inner strength, and a sarcastic sense of humor,
all of which she clearly needs as the story progresses.
Prince
Kai enters the story
when he brings a droid to Cinder for repair. It’s curious why he
would venture from the sanctity of the palace where he has a staff to complete
a seemingly simple task, but Cinder accepts his explanation even when her
optobionics flash the orange light. Kai is the equivalent of a rock
star sensation, but even though Cinder is a bit flustered at his
appearance, she does not swoon in his presence as her sisters and many others
would have done. Their first meeting sets the stage for others to
come. Cinder’s reactions to the prince are every bit as complex as
a “normal” teenage girl with a few added bonuses: her ability to blush was one
of the human elements she lost in her transition to cyborg; instead she gets
system alerts that she is overheating and needs to calm down! She remains
true to her blunt, sarcastic nature, all the while falling for him, and Kai
becomes more and more drawn to her, even as his responsibility to the crown
demands personal sacrifices that could keep them apart.
The
world of New Beijing is fraught with tension not only because of the increasing
spread of the letumosis plague, but also on account of the impending threat of
the Lunars. The Lunars are a race of people from the moon who are rumored
to possess the ability to exert mind control. An uneasy peace has been in
place for years, but the existence of a Lunar substation in Earth’s orbit and
tales of the greedy and violent Queen Levana (who is believed to have
murdered her own sister, husband, and niece in her quest for absolute power)
keep people on edge. When Prince Kai becomes the emperor after his
father succumbs to letumosis, he has to find a way to avoid war with the Lunars
and to find a cure for the plague, and Cinder might just hold the key to
both.
CONCLUSION: I do not normally tend toward
stories featuring androids and aliens, and still Cinder was a compelling
read. The beginning is a little slow, but after the first 50 pages, the
stakes become a little clearer and that helps the story to pick up in pace. There
are a couple of ‘mysteries’ that are pretty clear from the beginning, but the
character interactions are interesting enough that it doesn’t matter. The
pace slows a bit again toward the end of the book, but that made sense for the
way things concluded. In the last two chapters of the book, I did feel
like shaking Cinder, though, because she seemed to go a little
brain-dead; however, she got it together right at the end.
The
next book in the quartet, Scarlet, picks up where Cinder left
off, but it has a new protagonist, and its roots originate in the tale of
Little Red Riding Hood.
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2 comments:
Yep I loved it. I agree despite the fact you know certain things in the plot - the way Meyer twists it all still kept me riveted to my seat!
Pabkins @ My Shelf Confessions
Cinder is the 2012 debut young adult science fiction novel of American author Marissa Meyer, published by Macmillan Publishers through their subsidiary Feiwel & Friends. It is the first book in The Lunar Chronicles and is followed by Scarlet. The Read More cinder marissa meyer hardback