Cinder by Marissa Meyer

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.

There’s really only one thing I can say about this book: WOW! I loved every part of this cyborg retelling of Cinderella. The worldbuilding seemed more extensive than we got in the book, and what’s there is good: there are people on the Moon, they have strange powers due to generations living on the moon, people enslave cyborgs because they’re not really people, and there is a strange, deadly illness much like the boubonic plague going around killing people. In the midst of al l this, plus the threat of a war between the Earth and the Moon, the Prince must throw a coronation ball. Cinder the cyborg gets caught between all this. Cinder is a very intriguing character. Much like The Adoration of Jenna Fox this book forces you to think about where the line is drawn between human and machine. Cinder is a 36.28% cyborg. That means that the augmented leg, arm, and spinal cord she has from an accident as a child are 36.28% of her body. To the future society in Cinder this means she is a slave, purchasable and sell-able just like a full android. However, she has a brain, independent thoughts, and emotions. However, so do the androids around her. Does that mean they are human, even though the only part of them that came from a human is their programming, their personality chip? In a world like this can a prince even fall in love with a girl who is thought of as a machine? Will his country let him, politically? This book doesn’t answer all the questions, ending in a great cliffhanger for book 2, but I didn’t even mind that because I was so enamored with the rest of the book that I gave it a pass. Everyone should go out and get it today!