Cinder

SPOILERS IN REVIEW INCLUDING THE END SO BE WARNED!

It's harmless enough. I read it. I was entertained by it I guess. But is it a good book? No, not really.

The first thing I will say, is that seeing that this book is a retelling of Cinderella with our titular hero being a cyborg teenage mechanic (who was in a hover crash and burnt before her surgery - get it, Cinder). That has a lot of premise. It is set in New Beijing over a century after World War IV which does have me wanting to see a little bit of cyberpunk in there maybe. And since it is a fairy tale retelling, I am incredibly willing to hand wave away complexities for simplicity in retelling 'poor girl meets rich boy and they fall in love'. Because it's Cinderella too, you're looking out for the tropes and links and expect them - and having them is not a bad thing.

It's a readable story but it's a bit like eating an unremarkable sandwich. It feels functional, rather than particularly engaging, and though it's a young adult book it kind of treats the reader like a simplistic idiot too. I really wanted to root for Cinder and her technological make-up is really interesting - but she is not. Kai, the prince is almost pathetic in his super-duper goodness, complete lack of security, and ever so charming demeanour. We're expected for all girls and women to love him and there is no reason why other than that he is dashing. He's just annoying.

There's quite an ugly notion (similar to Cinderella) in depictions of beauty on the outside and ugliness on the inside and vice versa - but this can play out quite crudely in the book with equations of ugly equals bad. I don't think that was the message the author wanted but it sure played out that way. There's also a major character who is treated a little like a hero and good, but would be quite at home being an associate of Dr. Mengele and the biggest crime of all, is that the book ends on a cliffhanger and not a genuine ending. I really hate that in books. It's one thing to leave something open for a sequel or what's coming next but it feels like an ad break, and that's just cynical and cheap and I kind of thought if you can't end a fairy tale properly then it's a poor show.

Indeed, the last quarter of the book feels like a bit of a mess, as they race through a whole bunch of stuff and quite pivotal scenes (mirroring Cinderella's dance with the Prince at the ball) feel rushed, and quite implausible, even within the context of the fairy tale.

It's a shame really because there is a good premise here and some neat ideas but there is little depth to the world . For instance the politics of the book are a bit gross too - the solution to world wars is to have essentially four huge countries who love each other (and wow, calling one Africa drags me right back to being a child and hearing Africa described as one homogenous culture). And they all have variations of very kind authority to rule. There's little sense of space. New Beijing could be a bustling metropolis but it seems the size of a postage stamp. It's like nothing fits quite right in this book.

I can see why the book has it's fans but it is not for me.