If you love Anime, predictable stories that have a lot of plot holes, futuristic China, dystopian futures, and dark fairy tales that don't really work out, this is the book for you.
Otherwise, a disappointing read for me. I will not be reading any further installments in this series and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
I'll give Meyer credit in terms of creativity and writing, but the truth was, I just plain didn't like the story. Cinderella being a cyborg was the biggest problem, as well as this ridiculously huge, unexplained aversion normal people had towards them. It also appears Meyer did absolutely NO research when it came to modern Chinese culture. She may as well have gone to Chinatown in some American city and read a bunch of comics for her research and not asked any questions from the locals about how things worked. Her earth of the future makes little sense, nor does the lax treatment of the Leutmosis plague that's been a problem for earth for 12 years prior to the story. You'd think the scientists would have figured out the cause far earlier than that. It sounds especially like a cheesy Asian anime with all the little "android" robots running about in everyday society. (She apparently can't tell the difference between androids and robots at all).
I'm also not buying these Lunars. There's no way, not even through centuries of genetic manipulation, that human lunar colonists would have developed such mental abilities that allowed them to project illusions, or manipulate other people's thoughts and behavior. It doesn't fly with me. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't have issues with earth's higher gravity when visiting. Human beings living in such low gravity would have become taller, thinner, and way less strong compared to humans living on earth. Maybe if Meyer had written them as beautiful, pale, humanoid aliens that had colonized the moon a short time ago, maybe the story would have been more believable. Otherwise, it sounds stupid.
The book was also far crueler and darker than it should have been, with the nice stepsister dying of the plague, Cinder's beloved android friend getting trashed by her ogress of a stepmother, and arriving at the ball by crashing an ancient orange car and looking like a drowned rat from the rain that was falling during the event. The prince also seemed very immature for a guy who was supposed to have been groomed to take up the torch in the future after his father, and the fact that he was still acting like a rebellious teenager shows that either the author knows nothing about royalty, or she chose the cheap route of the overdone coming-of-age cliche too many teen authors use these days.
My rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5 stars) - I did not like it.
