Review Detail

This is a retelling of the story Cinderella. Except in this book, Cinder is a cyborg and an alien.

The plot was INCREDIBLY predictable. I suppose that's kind of the point, because we know about Cinderella, so we can draw parallels between the original and this new version. I get that, but the predictableness didn't really work for me. I'm sorry, I like books where the plot has a few twists and you have to keep changing your guess. Here, from the first like five pages, I already guessed exactly what was going to happen.

I'm not saying that the original Cinderella was melded perfectly into this new version, with lots of new interesting things added in everywhere, and changed, and now we get to know more about the character of Cinderella, but the plot was so predictable. Anyway. Moving on.

Cinder lives in New Beijing, with her evil stepmother and stepsisters (well, actually only one step sister is evil) who treat her like a servant. She is a mechanic, and a cyborg, and apparently an alien as well. (Btw, cyborg doesn't mean she is totally a robot. She is just part robot, the body parts that got damaged irreparably in an accident having been replaced.) There is NO fairy godmother in this one. And of course, there's the ball. And the prince. The prince is the emperor-in-waiting, and unlike in Cinderella, where he falls in love with her on first sight, this is a more gradual ease-into-the-relationship kind of thing. And there's also this whole issue about Lunars, people who live on the moon. See, their queen wants to marry the prince, but if she marries the prince, using her special powers (Lunars have special powers), she will enslave the whole country. If she doesn't marry the prince, she will wage war. The prince is really searching for a way out, and during that research, learns of the Queen's niece, who is apparently dead, but the prince thinks differently. And then of course he meets Cinder and they fall in love, and he doesn't know she's a cyborg, which makes everything a whole lots more difficult.

It was great that the setting was finally somewhere OTHER than North America. Seriously. Give me one great dystopian that is not set in North America. This was set in New Beijing (after the old one got destroyed in the Fourth World War). I was a bit confused by the language. I mean, were they speaking Chinese or was English now a universal language?

As I said before, the plot was well thought out in accordance with the original story, and even though it was predictable, there were lots of other things that kept me on the edge of my seat.

The romance wasn't heavy, which was good. I hate obsessive, heavy romances.

My favourite character was probably Iko, Cinder's metal sidekick. I LOVED her! Cinder was also great, with just enough rebellious streak. I also loved Kai, who was not only a prince, but genuinely nice and incredibly hot (well, in my imagination, at least.)

I definitely recommend this book. Unless, of course, you hate Cinderella. Or hate cyborgs. Or hot Asian princes who are not cold bastards. Or you have an incredible aversion to predictable plots.