Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Title: Cinder

Author: Marissa Meyer

Genre: Sci-Fi

POV: Third Person

Average Rating: 4.11

My Rating: 4

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Cinder follows a sixteen year-old cyborg girl named Cinder. She lives in plague-ridden New Beijing with her criticizing step-mother and step-sisters and works as a mechanic to help provide for them.
It's one day while sitting at her mechanic both, that Cinder's life begins to intertwine with Kai; prince of the Eastern Commonwealth. As she battles the force of her step mother, the deadly plague, and the weight of the Lunar-people on Earth, she tries to figure how to escape it all.

As a Dyspotian-lover, I loved reading about the world x-amount of years in the future.
In this future, Earth has been through 4 World Wars and it's people are served by androids and rely on "pods" for almost everything. As the countries of Earth are peaceful with each other, the threat of the Lunars weigh heavily on everyone. The Lunars reside on the moon, and have mind powers that terrify all of humanity.

My favourite part of this novel was how much Cinder grew as a character. She's definitely not my favourite in the world, and has many flaws, but she's definitely on the road of character development.
I can tell that a lot of thought went to each character and their stories. When you hear about the background of a character, it feels like it doesn't matter if they're "good" or "evil" because the means of how they got there feels justified.
I didn't find the pacing slow, but I wouldn't consider it fast, either. It was paced well enough to get to know each character while also staying intrigued by the plot.
My reasoning behind 4 stars instead of 5 has to do with the above things. While I loved the characters, I found that only a few were developed enough. While I liked the pacing, I found myself bored at times where there was description I didn't care about. It just didn't feel like quite enough to get a full 5 stars.
I love the idea of the Lunars. I add no idea they were even a thing going into this book and when it first came up I thought nothing of it... until they were brought up again and then I made the connection that the series is called The Lunar Chronicles. I'm SO excited to see what's next for the Lunars.

When I first heard of this book, I did not want to read it. "A re-telling of Cinderella where she's a cyborg. And instead of losing her shoe, she loses her leg," is what I had heard. Not even kidding. If that's what you think this book is about, it is so not true (she doesn't even lose her leg... spoilers?). There are so many more characteristics to this novel than it just being a re-telling and I'm so excited to see what the next books have in store. (I'm on Scarlet now, and really enjoying it. And I'm hearing Cress is the best in the series.)
I'd recommend this if you like sci-fi, dystopian, re-tellings, and romance. With this being a 4 (5ish?) book series, you'll want to jump on this train now!

Have you read Cinder? What'd you think of it?
If you haven't read it, do you plan to?