Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I didn't know what was going on for a while with this book, but once I figured it out, everything made so much sense. This book didn't have much plot, it was so internal and slow-moving and thoughtful, but I couldn't put it down. It was so good. It made me think and ask hard questions.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See was one of the best books I had ever read. I definitely intended to read Cloud Cuckoo Land as soon as I heard about it. And then Austin gave it to me for Christmas, and I really really wanted to read it. But it was so big! And I got pregnant and was so sick! And all I wanted to read the last six months was quick and easy short books, nothing that involved any actual thought or effort. But I feel like I kind of came out of that after our trip, and I finally jumped into this book--and it did take me a few days to get fully into it, but once I did, I couldn't put it down. I read the last 400+ pages in two nights because I couldn't wait to see where the story was going. I feel like it's rare that I am surprised by the way a story is organized these days--I've read a lot of books and it seems like there are patterns. But when I heard this one described, with three different storylines, set nearly 1000 years apart, I couldn't imagine how it would go. I love the idea behind it--three different time periods (1400s, present day, 200 years in the future) and five different characters, all tied together by the same story and how they interacted with it. The main idea of the book seems to be about the power of a story and how it can change and influence people, and about the importance of preserving stories and not letting stories and books disappear. 

I feel like sometimes with these books that have multiple storylines, there are one or two of them that I am not interested in or that I feel like I am just suffering through to get back to the ones that I like better. But in this book, I actually genuinely enjoyed all of the storylines. There was one character who I liked the least, but since there were five storylines, I felt like I was really excited about what was happening and finding out about each of the characters. I really was invested in Anna and Omeir, the two young kids on opposing sides of the war in Constantinople in 1452, and in Konstance, the teenager stuck on a spaceship hurtling through space, and in Zeno, the old man in 2020 who was translating the Greek story that was the thread that connected all of these disparate characters. 

Basically, this book was fantastic. It kept me thinking, it kept me engaged, and it was really well written and beautiful. 

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

I saw reviews and people talking about this book for years, and I kept meaning to read it. I actually checked it out from the library multiple times and kept trying to read it and just never got into it. I FINALLY did and I honestly don't know that it was worth all of the energy. I thought the premise just sounded really cool and really wanted to like it, and I did really like some of it--but I really never quite understood what was happening, or the big question of why or how. I felt like some really crucial explanation was missing and I never figured it out. The story was about how some people came to represent different boroughs of New York City as it anthropomorphizes into a living being, and how some evil force/group of people were trying to kill them to stop the city from developing fully. I liked the characters and how they figured out how to work together, and I liked the diversity among the cast of characters. I did feel like it was kind of bashing you on the head with a message, with Staten Island being cast off and being a racist white person who no one else could abide--I don't know, it felt really overt and almost obnoxious. But the overall plot was fun and interesting, but I was legitimately confused about who the bad guys were and why this city development thing was happening in the first place, and I never figured it out. 

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

This book won the Newbery Award for 2021, and as soon as I heard it had won I checked it out from the library to read it. Petra and her family get on one of the only three spaceships to leave earth before a comet hits the planet, and they are supposed to stay in hypersleep for something like 500 years until they reach the new planet where they are going to live. But when she wakes up, her family is all gone and the people who are running the ship have gone rogue and are not following the plans, so Petra has to figure out how to fool the people on the ship and escape safely. It was kind of a creepy and scary dystopian novel, which I think was totally fine, but I bet it would be hard for Dane to read, especially with the family disappearing. I think he'd probably be fine but we'll see. I really liked it and I thought it raised some interesting questions about what makes us human and what makes each of us "us" in a kid-appropriate way. 

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into with this one, and it was different from what I expected, but I enjoyed it all the same. It was about a robot, an "Artificial Friend," who is adopted by a girl and taken home to be her companion. The robot has to learn how to help and befriend this young girl and understand the moods and variations of being a human, and it's fun to see that from a robot's eyes. The book is narrated by the robot herself, and there are some things that she has decided or gleaned that aren't correct. The main incorrect belief she has is that the Sun is basically a god who gives power and healing to people--which is true for an AF because she is solar powered, but not to humans. But she has this all-powerful faith in the power of the sun as a good, loving god, and I thought that was the most interesting part of this book. I read a few negative reviews criticizing this book not for doing more interesting or innovative things with the artificial intelligence part of this story, but I didn't think that was really the point of this book. I thought it was more about how we have faith in things we can't see and don't understand, and sometimes our faith is misguided and sometimes it's true, and sometimes things work out the way we hope they will and sometimes they don't. I loved the depiction of Klara and her faith, and how she didn't give up even when nobody else believed in her. The story was gripping and definitely fun to read. 

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

I really liked Ready Player One. So I just randomly happened to see on Goodreads that there was a sequel that had just come out, so I immediately checked it out from the library and listened to it on audio. It was basically the exact same thing as Ready Player One, just slightly less enjoyable because it had already happened before and the characters were all slightly less likable for not being the underdogs any more. So definitely not as fun as the first, but still worth a listen for the excellent narration and fast-paced fun plot.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

This book took me by surprise. It's like 95% a normal story, realistic fiction about a girl in her normal life in New York City in the 1970s. But then you start to figure out there's time travel involved. I thought this story was just brilliant, and I absolutely loved it. I don't know why I haven't heard more about it... I really liked the way the author wrote and how she tells the story, I loved the main character and how she develops and learns where she needs to be kinder to everyone, and I was so impressed with the twists that I didn't really see coming with the time travel. I also loved how she incorporated A Wrinkle in Time throughout this book, with explicit references to time travel and kind of as foreshadowing for what is coming. I definitely would have loved this book as a kid and I really am happy that I read it!

Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

This is the sequel to Sleeping Giants, and I loved this one just as much as the first. This one had much more action to it than the first. In Sleeping Giants, they have discovered parts to a giant robot that they are trying to figure out how to use. But in this one, set ten years after the first, multiple giant alien robots come to earth and begin wiping out the population. So Dr. Rose Franklin and her team have to figure out a way to stop the robots from killing everyone, with their limited knowledge and their one robot. The action was very fast-paced in this book, and things went very quickly, which was fun for this audiobook. The story was seriously scary, with how many people were wiped out by these alien civilizations, and I actually was dreaming about it last night. The conclusion was seriously exciting, and I wasn't sure what was going to happen until the very end of the book--literally, just a few minutes till the end. I still love the recorded interview style of this book, and really am happy to be listening to these as audiobooks. (Unfortunately, the third book in the series is only available from our library as an e-book, so I have to decide if I want to read it or just not get it at all.)

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

I really, really liked this audiobook. It was such a fun surprise. Sometimes I get stuck in ruts when it comes to what I'm listening to, and I get tired of everything and I don't know why I bother--and then I get something really great to listen to and get all excited about audiobooks again. I absolutely loved this one, although the premise just sounds so weird and confusing I kept putting off listening to it. But it was definitely worth it! The idea was that there were giant alien-created robot body parts buried deep under the earth, and once one is discovered, scientists begin finding the rest of them and trying to find out what it is for. It's all about how they're assembling a team and stumbling around in the dark, trying to find out whatever they can about this robot that was apparently created six thousand years ago, so it has to have been created by aliens. The reasoning behind it sounded plausible to me (as a total non-scientist) and I thought it was just the right amount of science fiction to be still realistic. The plot was super interesting and although the ending was a little over-dramatic (to me), it definitely didn't take away from my enjoyment of the whole book. I loved each of the characters, and I absolutely loved listening to this one as an audiobook because of the fantastic narrators voicing each person. I think this is one that would have been much less entertaining to read than to listen to, and I felt like each of the narrators did a great job giving a personality to each of the characters. I immediately finished this and jumped right into the sequel, but I am bugged because our library only has a e-book of the third book in this series instead of an audiobook, which is really going to cramp my style. I'll see what I can do, though.

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

This book came with my Wrinkle in Time set as the fifth book in the quintet, although I didn't know it existed. I read all of the first four many times as a kid but I had never even heard of this one. And now I know why... it really wasn't that good. It kind of is the last in a different series as well, which I haven't read, which meant that I didn't get a lot of the references and kept waiting for them to be explained (but they never were). This book is about Meg and Calvin's daughter, Polly, who comes to live with her grandparents in their old house, for some unexplained reason, and she meets this boy there from some previous encounter (which is never explained, since it's from the other series) and she somehow stumbles into a time-travel series where she keeps accidentally going back three thousand years into the past and interacting with the People of the Wind who live there. But about 2/3 of the book is just her accidentally going back to the past for a second, then talking about it with her grandparents and asking them what they think, and talking about it some more. It really moved slowly and I didn't love it at all. Oh well, there it is. I still love the others.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This book was so good. And it was completely unexpected, which was a nice surprise. It's kind of hard to summarize without giving away spoilers. The main question that this book confronts is what happens with the road not taken? How do you know "what if" would have been so good, and how do you not take for granted what you have? The story has to do with the concept of the multiverse, where there are infinite numbers of universes with all sorts of possible lives and outcomes going along next to each other, although we just can't access them. But in this book, Jason Dessen is accidentally dragged into the multiverse and taken away from his loving family, and he has to figure out how to make his way back to his world, his universe, one of infinity, and to get back to his family. There were some twists that totally surprised me; some people might have foreseen some of them, but I didn't, and I loved it. I thought the ending came kind of abruptly, but it was fine, and I was happy with how it all ended. And I really was fascinated with all of the science in this science fiction: the physics of the multiverse and the hidden worlds we don't know exist. I don't know what exactly of the story was fiction and what was actual science theory, but it was fascinating to me nonetheless. I loved that this book was kind of a romance at its core, about one man's love for his wife and son and his desire to do anything to get back to them.

A few disclaimers: I listened to most of it, and then I couldn't handle the suspense any more and didn't want to slowly listen to another hour and a half, so when I had two more chapters left I broke down and borrowed the ebook from the library and read the rest. And it was way better to listen to than to read--the writing looks very choppy with hardly any paragraphs but just short sentences all the way down the page. But when you're listening you have no idea how it's formatted, and I enjoyed it a ton. The narrator did a great job and like I said, I had to finish it ASAP. Also, there were some kind of annoying quirks about the author's writing that I can't imagine why an editor didn't fix. Like, EVERY TIME Jason turned off the lights or finished a drink, he said he "killed" it. Like "I killed the lights, I killed the lantern, we killed the bottle of wine." Over and over and over and over. It's totally a fine phrasing to do once or twice, but he said it every single time and it got to be distracting and annoying. Nobody says they killed something every time they do it. Also, there was some language.

The Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle

This is the second book in the Time series and the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time, and I am really enjoying revisiting this series. In this book, Charles Wallace is struck deathly ill and Meg and Calvin are taken on a quest to save him and to fight the Echthroi, or the evil forces in the universe that cause war and death, which are apparently fighting to kill Charles Wallace by attacking his mitochondria in his cells. There's a whole different fantastical set of characters helping them with their quest, including Progonoskes, a cherubim who looks nothing like a cherubim as we know it but instead is mistaken for a drive of dragons with hundreds of eyes and feathers and flames. Meg and Calvin go with Progo and a few others into Charles Wallace's cells and manage to save his life (spoiler!).

A few thoughts about this book:
-A lot of it seemed really similar to Wrinkle. The final test happens almost as a surprise and the climax is so sudden and quick and there's almost no denouement afterwards to help you figure out what happened. Also, it seemed almost like the same lesson Meg had to learn--to show love and to win over the evil forces simply by showing her love (in Wrinkle she has to love the robot-Charles Wallace and in this one she has to Name all the Echthroi and Mr. Jenkins). Isn't that kind of the same thing?
-I thought it was so interesting that the mitochondria that were so central to the science fiction in this book were such a new thing when this book was being written that nobody knew what it was and it made everyone think Charles Wallace was crazy when he would talk about them. But they are such a standard part of seventh-grade science now that all kids know what mitochondria are now. It did get a little confusing with the combination of the farandolae (which L'Engle made up) and I had to check and see, is that something I forgot or is it not real?

Some really fantastic quotes from this book"
When Progo is talking about the Echthroi: "War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming--making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate. . . . When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be vanquished" (111-112). This seems so simple and even spiritual to me. If everyone knows who they are and feels loved, they won't need to hate. This seems like it would be the solution to all the problems in the world--if only it were easy to accomplish.

"The temptation for the farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves at the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center" (203). This is so appropriate for today's day and age! So many people never move past the stage of "immature pleasure-seeker" and waste their lives away.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

I absolutely loved this book as a kid. (I feel like that is a common theme for how I'm starting all of these book post reviews lately.) I read it so many times, but I haven't revisited it since I was in high school, I bet, and I wanted to see how I felt about it now as an adult. I was sucked in from the first chapter, and polished this off in an afternoon/evening while we watched our family movie for FPMN last night (it was The Sword in the Stone and I have no interest in that movie so I was reading surreptitiously on the side). And this time around, I think my experience was a little different. I loved, loved the beginning chapters where we meet all the characters--Meg, Charles Wallace, their mother, and Calvin. I instantly felt connected to all of them and loved them all. I especially love Meg and her angsty teenager-y-ness and her anger and stubbornness. She is grumpy and nasty sometimes and does things like yelling at her long-forgotten father in a selfish way, but it's so believable and real because that is how a stressed-out teenager would act. I also loved Calvin and how he is so open about loving the Murrys and his not fitting in with anyone else.

But I felt way more disconnected to the story once things got science fiction-y and they left the world and started tesseracting. I felt like L'Engle didn't describe much of the inter-world setting and I couldn't envision what they were seeing and doing. Like I couldn't really imagine what Mrs. Whatsit looked like when she transformed into the centaur that definitely wasn't like a centaur because it was indescribable to Meg. So many things were "indescribable" and it felt a little bit like a cop-out. However, that only tainted my enjoyment of a few scenes and I still felt very invested in the rest of the story, like when they get to Camazotz and meet IT, and when Meg has the climactic battle of love to save Charles Wallace from IT. I wish there were a little more at the end--the ending was so sudden and there wasn't enough closure to how they all were at home again. I am planning to re-read all the rest of the series as well. I didn't know that there were five books in this set--I'd only read four--but I have all of them now and I am going to work my way through them again.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I'd heard a lot about this book, and specifically heard the audiobook version was good. I don't know that I would have bothered to read it if I hadn't had an audiobook copy, because I am trying to work through a lot of other books that are taking more of precedence over random library books for now. But today and the last few days I've been working on a bunch of projects so I couldn't read, but I could listen to an audiobook, so I got a lot of listening in on this and managed to get through it pretty quickly. My main reaction is that I really liked it. It was quick-paced and exciting and engrossing, and a fun read. The story is about Wade Watts, a teenager set in 2045, who is participating in a worldwide contest searching for a hidden Easter egg in the Oasis virtual reality video game. Whoever finds the egg wins the prize of billions of dollars and control over the Oasis.

Here's what I liked about the book: it was fast, fun, and had a super-interesting premise. I thought it was very well-written and it was easy to stay engaged in it, even though I am decidedly not a video game person and the entire book is about video games, past and future. I liked (some of) the 80s references too.

Here's what I didn't like about the book: there were a few things I didn't understand, or quite believe, in the plot. Like, the year is only 2045 and the world is completely unrecognizable from today? I don't believe that. And little things--like Wade goes into debt and has to become the company's indentured servant to pay off his debt? In only 30 years from now? I honestly do not believe that would change that drastically. There were also a few times where I felt like the author contradicted himself about things a few pages or chapters apart (which always bugs me to no end--why did no editor catch that?). It also seemed like a way unnecessarily over-the-top amount of 80s references. It seemed unrealistic that the entire world would be that obsessed with the 80s and not be somewhat annoyed by it, without thinking, "Wow, I don't mind studying all this 80s stuff because it might make us billions of dollars if we win, but I would rather listen to 2045 music once in a while?" There was not a single reference to any sort of contemporary pop culture (other than Oasis video feeds, etc.), which seemed kind of unbelievable as well. There was also some profanity, and more than I thought was necessary.

Anyway, even though my paragraph about the negatives of this book is longer than the positives, I actually thought this book was solid. It's just easier to point out specific things that are irking me than specific things I liked. Here's the main selling point: the book was so good that I kept finding excuses to listen for longer than necessary so that I could get farther along in the story. This is definitely one I'll want to go see the movie. The trailer looks good and I'm excited to check it out.

The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn

In The Jane Austen Project, two people from the future time travel back to 1815 to meet Jane Austen and try to recover one of her manuscripts from being destroyed. Rachel and Liam are acting as brother and sister, who try to get in with Jane's brother Henry and to befriend Jane. This is obviously a very different sort of Jane Austen fan fiction, and I wasn't sure it would work super well, but I think it was very well done in many ways. It was so interesting to see the world of 1815 from the eyes of someone modern/futuristic--the things that wouldn't make sense to mention in Austen's original works. The things like the smells, the sounds, the uncomfortableness of the carriage rides. I really liked how detailed and how well-integrated all the imagery of the world was in this book. I also really liked seeing Jane Austen as a character in her own time period. She seemed like I imagine she would, and I liked her character a lot. My only real complaint about this book was the relationship between Rachel and Liam, the two modern characters traveling in time in this book--obviously they're going to fall in love (that's easy to predict from page 1), but I couldn't really tell why he liked her or why he seemed so odd around her sometimes. But mostly I felt like there was more talk of sex than I expected in a book set in 1815, even with futuristic characters (who are apparently more free and liberated even than today, haha). It wasn't terrible by any means, and nothing graphic at all in the whole book--but I just felt like a Jane Austen-esque heroine didn't seem like she should be thinking and talking about sex so much. It felt out of place and kind of willfully over-the-top to me. But I think the good parts of the book outweighed the not-so-good parts. The author is apparently a copy-editor, and she did a great job with her research and writing, and I liked this mesh of sci-fi and historical fiction.

Book #78: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Okay, this was a LOOOOONG BOOK. And it FELT long too. Cinder, the first book in this series, was only eight hours long on audiobook--and this one was 21. Twenty-one hours. I was kind of tired of it even before I started. But I finally got the e-book and was able to speed up the process by reading it and listening to it in intervals and am finally done. This book is the conclusion of the four or five-book Lunar Chronicles, where all the characters from the earlier three books come together to take down the evil queen Levana and put Cinder on the throne of Luna to make her the queen, as the long-lost princess of Luna. All the couples from each of the books pair up and are happy together at the end. Everyone ends up happy in the end.

The title character of this book is Winter, whose story is based off Snow White (and Queen Levana is the evil stepmother). She is a Lunar princess who has refused to use her Lunar gift to manipulate people, which is driving her mad. Literally. She is having hallucinations and acting crazy, and the only person who understands her and can take care of her is her childhood friend Jacin, who only wants to protect her. The queen is overwhelmingly jealous of Winter because of her beauty and tries to have her killed--multiple times.

I felt invested in this book because I'd already read the other four. It was just so. long. I understand that she had to wrap up the whole overarching storyline and write about Winter too and it's hard to have a whole revolution in one book... but man. Also, I felt like it was hard to really care about the revolution, since we never really learned about or experienced what their lives were like--and most importantly, Cinder never did either. It's not like in the Hunger Games where Katniss lives this hard life for forever so she has really good reasons to hate President Snow. It was kind of unbelievable that she could just sweep in and take over with so little preparation and understanding of Luna. Also, I just could never get behind the Kai-Cinder relationship. There is just no reason why Kai would ever be interested in her; she doesn't really do anything interesting or defining, ever. BUT the other relationships, between Scarlet and Wolf, Cress and Thorne, and Winter and Jacin are more compelling. My favorite parts of this book were the Winter-Jacin chapters, following them and the Snow White retelling. All the same, I'm glad that I read it--and I'm glad to have finished it and to be able to move on.

This series was definitely not the highest quality. The writing wasn't terrible, but there were so many things that I had problems with in each story. But it got into me and I didn't want to stop reading it. If I had known how long it was going to be I may not have gone past the first book... but it was worth my while in audiobook listening while rocking Lucy to sleep for endless hours over the last month or so. So it works out.

Book #74: Fairest by Marissa Meyer

This short novel is a kind of prequel to the Lunar Chronicles, telling how Queen Levana--the ultimate evil villain in this series--became who she is. She is based on the evil queen in the Snow White story, obsessed with being the most beautiful one in the whole land--which she can do because Lunars have the ability to cast a "glamour," or to change their appearance by making others see what they want them to see. The story shows why she is so obsessed with it (she was disfigured in a fire when she was a child, which scarred her face and body, and was taunted for it by her crazy evil sister), and how she was driven somewhat insane, dragging a man along to marry her, being convinced he loved her even though he didn't. I definitely wouldn't have read this if I hadn't read the others, and it was kind of annoying to listen to, because I felt like Levana was almost unbelievable. Even though she was so desperate and sad and had a horrible life inside those palace walls, I think it still didn't quite make me see her as a real character/person. But oh well, an interesting part of the series to listen to while rocking a baby in our cabin on vacation.

Book #73: Cress by Marissa Meyer

So, if it isn't obvious by the cover, Cress is the retelling of Rapunzel for the Lunar Chronicle series. Cress is a data-hacking prisoner for the evil Queen Levana, locked away in a satellite circling earth. She is responsible for hacking into all of earth's communication systems and spying for the queen--but she begins to help Cinder and her team in their quest to overthrow her. When they come to rescue her, her mistress discovers and blinds her rescuer and sends them in her satellite plummeting down to earth, and then they have to cross the Sahara desert and survive somehow together, and somehow rejoin Cinder's team and help them come up with a plan to stop Levana.

I liked Cress's storyline pretty well in this one, and I kind of liked how her more timid character contrasts so strongly with Scarlet's brash and overconfident one from the previous book. Not much happened in Cinder's plans to overthrow Levana in this book, except that they managed to stop her wedding to Kai temporarily. Overall, I liked the first two books in the series more, although that may have been because I listened to them and I read this one.

Book #70: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

This book is the second in the Lunar Chronicles series, the sequel to Cinder. Since Cinder was the futuristic retelling of Cinderella, Scarlet is the retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, in the same world and intertwining with Cinder's storyline. Scarlet lives in a small French town and works on her grandmother's vegetable farm, but her grandmother has been missing for weeks, and the police have decided she just went missing and have stopped looking for her. Scarlet doesn't know what to do or how to find her, until she gets the help of a mysterious and kind of scary street-fighter named Wolf. Dun dun dunnnnn...

I honestly was (and still am) a little creeped out and confused by Wolf, even after getting the explanation of who/what he is (by the end of the book). I don't quite get how Scarlet falls for him (not a huge spoiler, right? When the main character gets paired up with a guy for the rest of the book you expect that to happen). I liked how Scarlet was a super determined and strong-willed main character, although it honestly went a little too far for me and became almost obnoxious, like how she insisted on tracking down her grandmother and trying to save her even though it was COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that it was not just dangerous, but suicidal, and that there was no way a teenage girl could actually manage to do anything. I mean, come on. Nobody is that stupid, right? But I liked getting a little more detail about Cinder's background and learning about her, and I liked Cinder's new sidekick in this book, even though he did come on a little strong and cliche-y. It was definitely a solid book, and both storylines were interesting and fast-paced.

Book #69: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

OH MAN. We were out of town for two weeks in Utah and I actually read/listened to a bunch of books while we were gone and I have so many books to write about on here now. Yikes. I actually finished listening to this one before we left, but I didn't have a chance to write about it with all the packing and craziness of leaving town with three small children. (Seriously, it seems like a lot of children when you're trying to pack up all the things you need to bring with them.) But I remember it pretty well since I have been listening to all the other books in this series since then--which shows that I enjoyed it enough to follow through on the rest of the series.

I feel like Marissa Meyer was sitting one day and had the thought--what if Cinderella didn't lose her shoe when she was running away from the prince, but instead--her foot? That seems like the whole idea behind this retelling of Cinderella. Cinder is a cyborg, in a futuristic New Beijing (the old Beijing was destroyed during WWIV), and her arm and leg are totally made out of machinery. In this world, cyborgs are second-class citizens, and Cinder is a super-skilled mechanic who one day gets an exciting famous customer: Prince Kai, who has a very important broken droid who he needs help getting repaired. And the story goes on from there. Of course, since it's a dystopian futuristic story, Cinder can't just be a girl who falls in love with the prince, but also the beginning of a rebellion against an evil queen as well. But I really liked some of the details of this story--like the cyborg/android aspects of the world, the letumosis plague sweeping the world, and Cinder's hilarious flawed-personality-chip android Iko. The big plot twist came on pretty obvious to me (I won't spoil it), but that didn't really bother me too much.

Some other things did bother me though. Like, okay. There's an evil queen who rules the moon, and the moon people are like a totally different species than earthens because they have magical powers. (Why are there queens in the future? Nobody is going to have queens in a thousand years!) And the moon queen wants to take over earth, but she can't do that without MARRYING THE EMPORER? So she has to marry Kai? Ummmmm. What? And I'm sorry, but there is no way on earth that Kai would talk like an insolent teenager in these important diplomatic conversations with all the other earth leaders and the evil queen of the moon. His obnoxious attitude really got annoying and was totally unbelievable. There's no way he was that poorly trained when he was next in line for the throne. I was also really confused about why Prince Kai would be interested in Cinder in the first place. What on earth did she do to attract his attention? She fixed his droid, but it's not like they ever had any interesting conversations... It didn't make sense to me. BUT those annoying parts were smaller than the overall story, which I enjoyed--I just wanted to rant about them somewhere.

**Note: I listened to this on audiobook and I highly recommend it in that fashion. The narrator was fantastic and did excellent voices for each of the characters that really helped me to get the story. I think that helped me to get over some of the more annoying plot points that would have been overly obnoxious if I had been reading it.