Cinder (Lunar Chronicles, #1) by Marissa Meyer - Review

As the year is beginning to come to a close, I've realized that there are a lot of books I missed out on this year. There were so many great debuts that have come out that I simply didn't read and I don't know why. And so, as 2013 is looming, I'm trying to get in some last minute reads before their sequels come out in the spring. Cinder by Marissa Meyer is one such book. 

In Cinder, Marissa Meyer weaves a tale of a young woman living in the futuristic city of New Beijing which lies in the Eastern Commonwealth. Across the world, a plague is slowly creeping its way accross nations, killing all of it's victims and no one can seem to find a cure.

Now Cinder has some problems. She lives with her horrible step mother and step sister, she's forced to give all of her hard earned money to her step mother and worst of all, Cinder is a Cyborg. Because of a near fatal accident when she was young, scientists implanted robot parts where her human ones were damaged. She's forced to live the life of a lower class citizen, trying to be invisible. That all changes when the prince of the Eastern Commonwealth comes to her shop for a repair. Cinder's world is turned upside down after Prince Kai leaves her shop as Cinder learns more not only about the world she lives in, but aslo about who she really is.

This book blew me out of the water. I believe it may be my favorite book that I read all year. There were so many things that I loved about this book, the characters, the setting the plot... EVERYTHING and I'll explain why.

The characters: Not only did I fall in love with the human chacracters, but Meyer's non-human charaters cracked me up as well. Cinder is such a great YA heroine. She's got the whole package and more. I loved finiding out more and more about her past and although I picked up on a lot of the plot twists at the begining, Meyer wrote in such a way that had me excited to simply see how the characters lives  played out.

Prince Kai was such a dreamboat and I would have fallen for him too had I been in Miss Cinder's shoes. Other minor character's like Cinder's step mom and step sister were interesting as well. It was hard not to dispise her step mother and evil step sister and you couldn't help shed a tear as her younger sister fought for her life. Meyer gets an A++ in the character department.

The plot: As I talked about before, Meyer had such an exquisit way of presenting her story, I just couldn't put it down. While some points were slightly predictible to the frequent reader, it was hard to keep from skimming through the pages just to see what would happen next.

The setting: I've saved the best for last. As someone who reads primarily YA fiction, I can tell you that it's not often that you read a book with an Asian theme, much less Asian characters. This subject is near and dear to my heart. I lived in China with my family for a while as a kid and I majored in East Asian Languages in college. I even had the opprotunity to study in China for a semester. I was so excited to see that the Asian culture was featured in a YA story and I think that this aspect really brought the story home for me. I've been to Bejing many times and so to think of the city in the future, was so awesome.

As you can see from my crazy gush of a review, this book is a jem  and if you haven't read it yet, do it now!

10 out of 10

Happy Reading :)