Cinder

By Marissa Meyer
Lunar Chronicles Series #1
400 pages

Cinder is your typical retelling of Cinderella.  Only it is set in the future, the Lunar race from the moon is attempting to take over Earth, and Cinderella is a cyborg.

Cinder is an orphan with no past, all she knows is that the same accident that killed her family also disfigured her to the point of needing mechanical parts to survive.  Cyborgs are inferior in her society, add to that the fact that her adoptive mother despises her and her life is far from pleasant.  But all is not terrible, she is a gifted mechanic, has close bonds with her family's android and her stepsister, and one day the prince himself stops in her shop and is quite friendly with her.  Everything changes in an instant though when the deadly plague appears in her house.  Suddenly, Cinder is realizing that there is much more to the story of her past, and it is only the beginning.

This was a fun read and I'm looking forward to the next book.  Meyer did a wonderful job incorporating the traditional Cinderella story in with a sci-fi plot.  I only wish she had left out the part about the ball.  It seemed like much too much of a stretch, I think a more appropriate event could have been substituted.  Otherwise a fun story for summer reading!