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 one is destroyed due to nuclear war), where she is a renowned mechanic. She meets Kai (prince charming) when he goes to the market to get his android fixed, and the fairy-tale plot goes on from there.
But this is so much more than a cute-meet followed by evil stepsisters, fairy godmothers, and a plot line of convenient coincidences. Meyer’s characters are all fully-fledged, motivated individuals. Cinder has a profession and a talent that gets her where she’s going, the prince isn’t just a hot cipher, but an actual ruling monarch who’s trying to keep his kingdom from entering a galactic war; coupled with all the stress that comes with that. And the evil stepmother’s hatred for Cinder stems from psychological issues of loss and societal pressure instead of her just being a nasty bitch.
While I did get a little distracted by the teenage feels a couple of times throughout the book, I don’t blame the story or Meyer’s writing for that since this is definitely a YA, and those feels are not only important to the fairy tale, but also to the reality of teenagers (even royal ones) dealing with blossoming hormones.
I’ve already picked up book 2 of the Lunar Chronicles and I’m very much looking forward to watching how Meyer weaves more fairy tales into this cyber world!