It took several passes by over the course of several months to pick up a copy of Cinder. Even though I love fairy tale adaptations and tend to make a point to buy and read every one I find, there was something about the summary that just turned me off to the book. Eventually I caved.

Cinder is (obviously) a retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale and holds to all the tenants that prescribes: a young girl under the care and abuse of her "evil" stepmother and two stepsisters, a handsome prince, a ball, and a lost shoe. Although, in this case the shoe is actually her foot. Because Cinder is a cyborg.

So let's talk about the reasons I enjoyed the book, because I really did even though I hadn't expected to.

First, I genuinely like Cinder. She's spunky, but not confident. She's shy, but also passionate. She has spent her entire life being an outcast and lies about it to the prince because she doesn't want him to look at her the way everyone looks at her. And I totally get it. I was very similar when I was a teenager, and I think that helped me relate to her character (even though I didn't have any mechanical parts nor an evil stepmother.)

Second, all the characters are very active. And by that I mean that they're not reactive. And by that I mean that they actually live life, rather than let life just happen to them. For example, fairly early on in the book, Cinder's stepmother sells her to a medical lab as a sacrifice to help find a cure for the plague. Cinder takes this opportunity to bargain with the doctor and save money to escape from her life.

Third, I like how Meyer twists the well-known fairy tale. The story is engaging and, well, different. Cyborgs, imbedded ID chips, not-quite-alien beings who somehow evolved to have the ability to manipulate the thoughts and feelings of others. So much of the book rings true to the science fiction genre. It's not just space travel and hovercars and cybernetics, and it's not lightsabers (sorry Star Wars fans, but I just don't understand those things). It's that so much of the story is believable in the sense that you can really see humanity moving forward in similar technological ways.

Of course, while I appreciate the science fiction elements of the novel, I do wish that Meyer had chosen to stray just a bit further from the book's original fairy tale plotlines. Despite the twists that are rooted in the futuristic science, the overall narrative is predictable. She could have used the character of Cinderella as a simple base, like she does in subsequent novels (more on that in later reviews).

Overall, the book is an excellent introduction to the series. It properly introduces a few of the main characters and what is ultimately the overarching conflict while managing to still feel complete. I've read plenty of first-books that feel less like a novel in their own rights and more like a really long prologue. Cinder feels like one book, and leaves readers excited to see what happens next.