Book Impressions: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

I bought Cinder, the first book in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, some time early on in 2012 - and then I sort of forgot about it. 

'A fairytale retelling,' I scoffed to myself. 'I'm really not even sure why I bought it - why should I want to read a retelling of Cinderella anyway?'

And yet, seeing positive reactions from here and there, including people whose tastes I'd come to trust, I finally picked it up, months later.

Cinder & Scarlet

**** & ****

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.

I read it, and ... 2012 was a good book year for me, with several new books/series that I loved, and Cinder was definitely among them. It did not get quite close enough to five stars for me, but as close as possible.

I just enjoyed it tremendously. Yes, the big plot reveal was extremely predictable, and the whole central "the prince instantly falls for her" thing is, well, wouldn't make sense or wouldn't be to my taste ordinarily, but seeing as it's a Cinderella retelling, I didn't really have an issue with it here.

But the plot was clever, Cinder was an awesome protagonist, the writing was great (well, it didn't have anything to turn me off!), I liked the setting, I liked the secondary characters. My only complaint was that Scarlet wasn't out yet and I had to wait!

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

I was genuinely curious as to how Meyer will manage to tie all those different fairytales into one coherent overall story arc. As much as I was looking forward to Scarlet, I wasn't entirely sure it could be done, to be honest.

I was glad to see I was wrong. Scarlet is, of course, Scarlet's tale, more than anything else - but it ties into Cinder's story in ways that make sense, and I was happy to see that a reasonable chunk of this book was still devoted to Cinder. The only quibbles I had were to do with Wolf; it's not as if I disliked him, really, but he just didn't appeal to me all that much.

The Lunar Chronicles will contain two more novels, Cress and Winter, and I'm extremely excited about both of them. There are also a number of short stories already available, set in this universe, but I've yet to read them.