Review: CINDER

TITLE: CINDER
BY: MARISSA MEYER
SYNOPSIS:
"Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future."

RATING: 4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

REVIEW:
How am I the last person on Earth to read this book?

(Obviously this is a false statement, but I’m sure you understand what I mean).

Oh yeah, because I’m a moron.

Sure it has stellar reviews, but I’m always wary. Just because more people love it than not, doesn’t mean I’ll fall in the majority. This book’s synopsis was pretty much the epitome of all things that make me wary. When I read the back of this book eons ago, I gave it one of those suspicions I-don’t-trust-you-squints, then set it back down on the shelf and backed away slowly.

First, Cinderella is one my least favorite fairy tales (second only to Sleeping Beauty). I know, *gasp* BLASPHEMER! THEY’RE CLASSICS!. Well, to each their own because, personally, I just always found it a bit boring.

Second, I’m not the biggest fan of retellings (unless it happens to be Ever After. Sigh.), so I definitely wasn’t too keen on a retelling of a fable I already could care less about.

Third, Cinderella is a cyborg. So many red flags went up in my mind. That could have easily gone wrong on so many levels. Plus, it sounded so gimmicky. Every time I saw the book cover or read “Cinder” and “cyborg” in a sentence, that movie trailer guy’s voice would pop into me head and say: IT’S THE CINDER-MINATOR!



But then it was on sale on kindle, and I caved. I figured it couldn’t hurt to check it out, especially for $2.99, and I am SO STOKED I did because, let me tell you guys, this is storybook magic right huuurr! No joke! And all the things I thought I would hate most about it (I’m also wary of stories with princes, by the way), turned out to be the same things that made me fall in love with this story and the characters.

All the characters that are meant to be extremely likable and endearing are exactly that. Then, there are the one’s who aren’t—those people are on the completely opposite side of the spectrum, and there is a special place in fictional hell for them. Also, the dialogue, so snarky and clever! The interactions between Cinder and Kai made me so giddy, I felt like Peony. Then there is Iko, the best android-bff a girl could ever ask for. Think sassy R2-D2 with a love for shoes and a need to feel human, thanks to her “faulty” personality chip. I’ve been trying to form ideas for ways I might make Siri my own little Iko. So. Freaking. Adorable!

Anyways, what I’m basically getting at is that, YES! I would most definitely recommend! Check it out :)

Review: THE WORD EXCHANGE

TITLE: THE WORD EXCHANGE
BY: ALENA GRAEDON
SYNOPSIS:
In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted “death of print” has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are things of the past, and we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but also have become so intuitive that they hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange. Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL), where Doug is hard at work on the last edition that will ever be printed. Doug is a staunchly anti-Meme, anti-tech intellectual who fondly remembers the days when people used email (everything now is text or videoconference) to communicate—or even actually spoke to one another, for that matter. One evening, Doug disappears from the NADEL offices, leaving a single written clue: ALICE. It’s a code word he devised to signal if he ever fell into harm’s way. And thus begins Anana’s journey down the proverbial rabbit hole . . . Joined by Bart, her bookish NADEL colleague, Anana’s search for Doug will take her into dark basements and subterranean passageways; the stacks and reading rooms of the Mercantile Library; and secret meetings of the underground resistance, the Diachronic Society. As Anana penetrates the mystery of her father’s disappearance and a pandemic of decaying language called “word flu” spreads, The Word Exchange becomes a cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller and a meditation on the high cultural costs of digital technology.

RATING: 3 OUT OF 5 STARS

REVIEW:

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This book had everything I love: words, dystopia, romance, conspiracy, epidemic, action, developed characters, a unique and innovative plot…it’s basically an emporium of all the magical things I crave in fiction. So why am I not wild for it?

The first quarter of the book had me glued. I was curious and enthralled by Gaedon’s world and the story she was weaving. Such a fabulously rare idea executed with creativity and inspiration. For me, it was somewhat reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s, ANTHEM, a first literary love of mine. For a quarter of the book I was on a high, giddy with anticipation for how epic the book, and my love for it, would be…Except, it didn’t really turn out the way I imagined. Somewhere along the way my enthusiasm for THE WORD EXCHANGE fizzled and burned out.

I think the foremost culprit for this was its lengthy exposition, which I felt they should have trimmed significantly. There were anecdotes and tangents that superseded their point and went into overkill, much of it completely irrelevant to the plot and did not further the story. Perhaps, it was Gaedon’s intentions to offer her readers a really in depth understanding of the characters/their memories/surroundings/etc, but it was shark-infested-waters deep. This eventually led me to do a lot of skim reading, which I hate doing because I don’t want to miss out on a tiny, but important detail, but I was getting restless.

While I appreciated what Gaedon did, and the way she chose to execute it (THE WORD EXCHANGE really is a form of literary art), I just wasn’t on her level. At first, I enjoyed having to look up so many obfuscating words, but it didn’t last. It was time consuming and it took me out of the story. (Yes, Gaedon, I see what you did there). The book was not completely to blame for my boredom. It’s also my personality type. This is a book a reader isn’t meant to rush through, it’s a book to be absorbed, every nuance and detail appreciated. I’m just not that reader. I have a short attention span. No matter how brilliant or clever something is, if it’s dragged out I lose interest.

THE WORD EXCHANGE is not a light, easy read unless you have the vocabulary of a Spelling Bee World Champion (or an MFA in creative writing), and the patience and concentration of a generation not accustomed to instant gratification. But even if you’re like me, it doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from this reading experience. Whether it’s a new word or how you view technology/language/communication, this book will assuredly teach you something new.