Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

20 June, 2012 Reviews 16 comments

You know when people keep talking about a book.  Lah, this is fantastic!  OMG, you have to read this!  If you don’t read this I’ll shank you and play hackeysack with your kidneys!

The usual…

This is one of those books.  I was cruelly declined on netgalley so had mostly buried it in my TBR pile and forgotten about it until people started terrorizing me with demands to read it.

Oh am I so bloody happy I did!  I loved this book!  I stayed up most of the night to read it!  It wasn’t perfect, of course.  There are several things I might have liked to be changed about it but I feel the characterization of the two main protagonists was fantastic.  I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style and the story.’;

There’s really not much for me to do here.  I mostly just want to find everyone else who read this book and give them the highest of fives.

I mean… yeah, if you want to get technical, it annoyed me that all the antagonists were women (and that there were only two positive female characters outside of the main protagonist)  and they were all horrible people.  That breeding of distrust for the sisterhood always raises my hackles and most people won’t be bothered by that.  I would have liked the atmosphere of New Beijing to feel more… atmospherey, ya know?  The actual location felt a little under developed in that regards.  Sure I don’t expect every sentence would be filled with reminders to the location but I wanted to feel the city and the people and the world – which I often didn’t.

I hope there’s more cyberpunk in the next one.  Hovercars, screens, id bracelets, androids and cyborgs is cool but let’s amp up the imagination!  Let’s build that world and make it even more fantasmagorical!

But mostly, Meyer is seriously on my shitlist for that ending!  I can’t believe I have to wait until Scarlet!  SO UNFAIR!

How could you?!  Do you hate us?  Are you trying to punish us?  What, oh WHAT did we ever do to deserve the agony of having to wait for Scarlet?

I may never forgive.  Unless, ya know, Scarlet is REALLY awesome.

I will await my sentencing until then!

16 Responses to “Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer”

  1. Lynn K

    Glad you liked it! 😉
    If you like audiobooks, you might wanna give this one a go too. I really enjoyed it. (I usually don’t listen to audiobooks because I have a short attention span and I’m really picky about voices)

  2. Katie @ Blook Girl

    Yay! So glad you read and loved Cinder 🙂 This was definitely my favorite read for the first half of 2012. Scarlet promises to be even more amazing, since we’ll be taking a departure from the general Cinderella storyline. I SO wish I were at ALA this weekend, because I’d be standing in line at the crack of dawn for an ARC of Scarlet.

  3. Kara @ Great Imaginations

    I really liked this book as well. Your criticisms? I have the same ones. I wanted more atmosphere and a little more description. I wasn’t as involved in the setting as I was hoping to be. Except the market scenes. Those were kick-ass.

    And I always get angry when all the female characters are unlikable. Just read a book like that, actually. And it made me want to f*cking throw something. I’m not sure I noticed it in this book because I was so involved in the story, but now that you think about it, I see why you feel that way.

  4. Yzabel

    Hm… Is the “negative female protagonists” aspect that bad, or more like a slight nuisance? I want to read this book, but it’s precisely the kind of things that might throw me off pretty quickly…

  5. Jessie

    This one is such fun. I thought soem of the twists were way too transparent (the Lunar storyline in particular) but I liked the updated look at Cinderella.

    It is dastardly long cruel wait til Scarlet. I have seen some people with ARCs on GR and Twitter and have been consumed with envy. Want want want.

    Loved the review, Kat 😀

  6. hrose2931

    Okay, just won a copy and it came the other day. Don’t think I want to read it until Scarlet comes, but you know it will have the same kind of ending. Hmm, do I wait for the whole series? That’s four years. Or do I sweat it out with the rest of YA-dom? Seeing that you had very little to pick at, and it seems to still be living up to the hype, I’m inclined to read it and sweat it out. At least I won’t be alone!

    Heather

  8. Tien

    I’m glad you liked it!! Cuz it means that I won’t be sorry that bought it last week! :p

  9. Christina (A Reader of Fictions)

    Haha, much as I love your angry reviews, I’m really glad you enjoyed this. I think my favorite YA trend is sci fi fairy tale retellings with a tiny splash of dystopia. So many things. They end up so awesome.

    *high fives*

  10. Lexie B.

    I’m glad you enjoyed this one! 😀 I agree with most of your complaints–I wasn’t crazy about all the antagonists being female (though it’s pretty common in fairytales), and I wish she would’ve fleshed out the world a bit more, but for the most part, it was just a really enjoyable, kick-ass story. I’m kind of ridiculously excited for the next three books.