Cinder by Marrisa Meyer

This week I have been reading a book called Cinder by Marissa Meyer, an interesting turn on the Cinderella story. Well, Cinder, or 'Cinderella' is a cyborg. Yes, you read that right. Totally. I am reading a book about Cinderella as a cyborg. Its not as bad as it sounds.

Cinder lives in the future, in 'New Beijing', and she works as a mechanic. In fact she is the best mechanic in the city, at the age of 15. And, as I believe I have already mentioned she is a cyborg. In this future, when you lose a limb, or are seriously wounded, instead of giving you an artificial one, they make you into a cyborg, replacing the missing limbs with metal ones, and getting totally rewired. Her 'guardian' is Adri a women she very much dislikes. Her life is controlled by Adri. Cinder has no freedoms.
All of a sudden everything in her life goes completely haywire, starting with someone in the market where she works catching the plague, meaning she has to flee home, before she catches it. On returning home (where her sisters are being fitted for dresses for a ball- I know, very Cinderella-ish.) her sister Peony  catches the plague. Peony is taken away by Med-Droids, and then Adri makes Cinder volunteer to be tested on for new Plague treatments, blaming her. No cyborgs had ever survived the testing yet, and Cinder is sure it is the end for her.
After a series of tests, Cinder has been proved to be immune to the plague. This is a huge surprise, and now she has a vital role in finding out how to find the medicine to fix it all. She makes the doctors promise,  that the first to be treated with any remedy will be firstly, the emperor, and second her sister.
When the emperor dies and the whole of the commonwealth is thrown into chaos. Prince Kai is now King, at 19 . The Lunars (a  civilization that live on the moon) are choosing this time to talk to the commonwealth people and sign a peace treaty. Everyone can see behind this - the Lunars have been promising war for 12 years, and now is the time at its weakest. Cinder has to run.

This is book is really interesting and amazing, even if it does have some very predictable twists I really love dystopian novels, so this was my kind of book.  I would definitely  recommend it to everyone who wants to read something different and very unique. Where else do you have any chance to read something about cyborgs in the future, based on cinderella, with elements of the plague and Star Wars? I think it is a job well done by Marissa Meyer!

I understood most of the book, but one of the words that I had to check the definition was predisposed. Dr. Erland says "Something in your DNA that has predisposed your immune system to fight off the particular disease" when explaining that Cinder is immune to Letumosis, or the plague.  I was looking for a few definitions, and this one explains it best - a disposition in advance to react in a particular way. This means that Cinders body had already learnt to protect itself from the disease.