The Bibliophile's Bookshelf

This month’s theme for Saturday Spotlight is sci-fi. This is the final post for this theme. The other books I have discussed were Illuminae, The 5th Wave, and A Spark of White Fire. You can find those posts here, here, and here.

This week’s book is Cinder by Marissa Meyer. This is book one in the Lunar Chronicles.

There series order is Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Fairest, Winter, and Stars Above. There are also two graphic novels that take place after Winter. These are Wires and Nerve and then Gone Rogue.

Cinder is a Cinderella retelling. This takes place in Bejing, with a horrible plague running throughout the world. Cinder is a cyborg, which are seen as lesser citizens in this world.

When she tries to save her stepsister from the plague, her live becomes intertwined with Prince Kai. She is then thrust into intergalactic problems and an attraction she shouldn’t have.

This book is super good. I will say that it gets better as the series progresses. We meet even more characters who are amazing, and all of the books are retellings of popular fairytales. The friendships and romances between these characters are amazing! I have also never seen a sci-fi retelling of fairytales.

These books have clean romances and not super graphic violence, which I enjoyed as well. If you’re looking for a new fairytale retelling with wonderful characters and relationships, then Cinder is the place to start.

Summary:

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.