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A review by chirson
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
2.0
The author was a huge Sailor Moon fan, and the book is largely influenced by the world-building and style of Sailor Moon, but not necessarily in a good way.
I expected it to be better, at least marginally. The ideas are cool, but the execution falters to me, because the pieces just don't fit together terribly well. The personal and the global are tied in a way that is based on coincidence and requires constant suspension of disbelief. Using fairy-tale tropes, instead of helping (providing structure) actually seems to be detrimental to the story (the nods to the original are in turns fun and unbearably cheesy - the pumpkin in particular). The Prince is paper-thin and hyper-emotional, and his constant fury at the villain was simply boring to read. I wish they'd got rid of the prince's royal title, made the story less about the romance - or made the romance at least a bit more gripping - and then the cyborgs and the Lunars and New Beijing could have been given some actual atmosphere. The world-building could have been interesting, but instead felt merely disjoined. I always thought the Hunger Games had some problems with making the entire world fleshed out (the fragments were awesome, but the whole - not so much) but here it just doesn't seem to make sense. There's a Commonwealth of Asia? With an Emperor? But some other countries have elected politicians? And there's the Moon, where evil creatures live, and they have weird superstitions that prevent anyone without royal blood from gaining power, except those royal bloodlines are how long again? Not terribly, if I understood correctly...
And the villain... I wish they'd made her the least bit interesting, but instead she's monstrous feminine, has not an ounce of motivation other than "obtain supreme power over everything at all cost" and is actually secretly ugly (that's why she's evil! just old-fashioned envy!). Such a wasted opportunity.
I expected it to be better, at least marginally. The ideas are cool, but the execution falters to me, because the pieces just don't fit together terribly well. The personal and the global are tied in a way that is based on coincidence and requires constant suspension of disbelief. Using fairy-tale tropes, instead of helping (providing structure) actually seems to be detrimental to the story (the nods to the original are in turns fun and unbearably cheesy - the pumpkin in particular). The Prince is paper-thin and hyper-emotional, and his constant fury at the villain was simply boring to read. I wish they'd got rid of the prince's royal title, made the story less about the romance - or made the romance at least a bit more gripping - and then the cyborgs and the Lunars and New Beijing could have been given some actual atmosphere. The world-building could have been interesting, but instead felt merely disjoined. I always thought the Hunger Games had some problems with making the entire world fleshed out (the fragments were awesome, but the whole - not so much) but here it just doesn't seem to make sense. There's a Commonwealth of Asia? With an Emperor? But some other countries have elected politicians? And there's the Moon, where evil creatures live, and they have weird superstitions that prevent anyone without royal blood from gaining power, except those royal bloodlines are how long again? Not terribly, if I understood correctly...
Spoiler
But it's important because that's the protag's sole claim to relevance.And the villain... I wish they'd made her the least bit interesting, but instead she's monstrous feminine, has not an ounce of motivation other than "obtain supreme power over everything at all cost" and is actually secretly ugly (that's why she's evil! just old-fashioned envy!). Such a wasted opportunity.