Review - Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Genre: young adult / fantasy / science fiction
Pages: 434
Rating: 4/5 stars
Goodreads

Summary 
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.

My thoughts
I really liked the concept of the book that it is sort of a retelling of Cinderella but with a cyborg as main character. Sometimes I find retellings a little bit annoying when they are to much like the original story, but this one definitely was something different. I didn't know that the plague would play such a big part in this book, but I really liked it because it raised the stakes. I thought Meyer did a good job of making Cinder a real character. She struggled with the fact that others thought the was worth less than a human because she was a cyborg and didn't like that people couldn't see beyond that, but she herself also had her prejudices about the lunar people. She was a likeable main character, but she also had her flaws. 
The ending was a bit predictable, but still enjoyable. The book was fast paced and made me want to read on until I was completely finished. The only aspect of this book I didn't really like, was the ability the lunar people had with which they could influence the way other people saw them. There was sort of an explanation of how this worked, but it wasn't a full explanation. I rather have no explantaion at all than a bad one. Than I can just accept it, instead of being confused. Usually with science fiction elements I want things to be explained, but with fantasy elements I can just accept that some things are the way they are in the story, eventhough they would not be possible in the real world. The power of the lunar people seemed to be neither fantasty (as in magic), nor science fiction (although it clearly was meant to be).