A long time ahead in a galaxy not that far away…
There are a lot of, what, homages or ripoffs or whatever you want to call them out there these days, from Jane Smiley and Alice Hoffman rewriting King Lear to Sharon Shinn updating Jane Eyre to sf to some guy turning Elizabeth and Darcy into zombies (didn’t read it, please don’t comment I got it wrong, I don’t care), not to mention a little novel called Bad Blood by yours truly. We writers are shameless. What, you didn’t know Shakespeare ripped off all his stories, too? Tsk.
And of course writers have been rewriting fairy tales since there were fairy tales, vide Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm. Cinder is an exemplar of the art. A long time ahead in a galaxy not that far away, cyborg mechanic Cinder looks up from her work bench to find Prince Kai of the Eastern Commonwealth (capital: New Beijing, rebuilt after World War IV) standing in front of her with his personal android, Nainsi, who (I’m saying “who” not “which” for a reason) has gone on the fritz. Will Cinder fix her, please?
And awaaaay we go on, off on an sf Cinderella adventure with a seriously wicked stepmother, an even ickier stepsister, a fairy goddoctor and (I’m pretty sure) an orange Volkswagon Bug for a coach. The evil Queen Levana of Luna (aka the moon) is using her dastardly mental control powers to force Prince Kai into marriage, all the better to invade and conquer the Earthens as his Empress.
The first of four novels in the Lunar series, which Amazon reliably informs me will go on to include reworkings of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White, all disguised as YA sf romance novels. This one is well-plotted, all the characters are interesting and at least marginally multi-dimensional (Although I hate to give her stepmother and sister any credit for being human, alas, Meyer insists they are) and the setting feels like present day Hong Kong. Can’t wait till we get into space.
Book Review Monday Chatter Cinder Lunar Chronicles Marissa Meyer
Enjoyed the series. Shared it with my young cousin who loved them (perfect age for them).
I loved them enough to share with my daughter in law and my nieces. I think the series got better with each book, as so many do!