Genres/Themes: Fantasy, Retelling, Romance
My Rating: ★★★★☆
Wow. This was both an awesome and frustrating book. The world that Marissa Meyer made for this story was amazing, though there was one thing that really bothered me about it, and unfortunately it is one of the biggest rules of Meyer's world. Cyborgs aren't human.
Cinder is treated as crap not just because she was "adopted" by her stepfather and then left to her stepmother when he died, but because she was a cyborg. Being a cyborg means she isn't human anymore. She's property. A slave. Infuriatingly WRONG!
Why does a person's position in the world change because they gain a few metal parts? So if the emperor were to get into an accident, lose half his body, and become a cyborg, is he removed from being emperor and become a common slave? This is just messed up. And the fact that her "legal guardian" was able to sell her for scientific experimentation when I'm assuming human trafficking is illegal was just wrong. If human trafficking is illegal, how can cyborg trafficking be okay?
The line stating that cyborgs owe themselves because of the miracle scientists were able to perform was just immoral. I'm assuming that many of these cyborgs were in accidents and had to pay for surgery to save their lives. They paid for the surgery, why are they supposed to keep on paying. If a patient has a brain hemorrhage, and the doctor saves their life, how are they different from the cyborgs. Both would have died; both were saved by medical miracle.
