Sigh. I really wanted to love this quirky and cute little book. And for a little while, I did. A modern, geeky take on Cinderella? A love story where the interaction takes place mostly over text? Cons and Cosplay? It all sounded great. The first two-thirds of this story worked for me. Elle lives with her horrible step-mother and horrible twin step-sisters in the house where she grew up. Her mother died when she was really young and her father died a few years ago, […]
Probably not the best review to read if you’re on the fence about these books….
Cinder – 3.5 stars (13 reviews, 4.23 avg) I’m going to start off by saying that I’m probably not the demographic for this novel. This book has an excellent rating on Goodreads, and has gotten great reviews here on CBR. My wife loved the book, and enthusiastically encouraged me to read it. I thought it was okay. But I’m not really a fan of fairy tales, and have struggled in the past both with the romance genre and young adult fiction. So, while I wasn’t […]
The characters and story were fine. The editing? Not so much.
Now that Bunnybean is tearing her way through the Lunar Chronicles books, I figured I might as well try and finish up the last book (I don’t count the new book of “related short stories” that just came out), Winter. I wasn’t all that excited about reading it, to be honest. I loved Cinder and Scarlet, and really liked Cress. And then I read Fairest. And I despised it. It really almost ruined the entire series for me. It was so heavy-handed and annoying, I […]
Every story really needs a Han Solo
Hi, everyone! I hope you’re having a great start to the year. I’m so excited to be doing cannonball read again! I just finished a book called Scarlet, which is the second book in the Lunar Chronicles. I’d like to thank Terri (ModernLove) for getting me the third book, Cress, for Christmas in the book swap. I can’t wait to start reading it! The book continues the story about Cinder, a mechanic who is cyborg. In the previous book, Cinder, Cinder is invited to the […]
A Refreshing New Take on an Old Classic
I don’t know why I put off reading this series for so long. It’s GOOD. Meyer is an excellent story-teller and like alwaysanswerb says, Meyer uses the Cinderella fairy tale as her basis, but the story is 100% her own. I think the thing that makes this absolutely brilliant is moving the plot into a super-advanced technological future where we can’t make any real ties to the bucolic setting of the original fairy tale. Cinder (Cinderella) is a cyborg living in “new” Beijing (the old […]
Feminist Fairy Tales Are Always Acceptable
I probably should have written this a few weeks ago, around the time I finished the book, but things always seem to conspire against me. I picked Cinder up on a whim; it was in the right place, at the right price. I’d seen it popping up on my Amazon suggestions for awhile and I knew the basic premise of it. Retelling of Cinderella set in a future world, and something about robots (judging by the cover.) And that is not inaccurate, though I think it […]