I was a touch wary of this. A retelling of Cinderella where Cinderella was a cyborg and a mechanic, set in a Beijing of the future with a weird (potentially dystopian?) government, moon colonies, and also a mysterious (potentially apocalyptic?) disease? It sounded like too many things put together. How on earth could something like this actually turn out to be worth reading?

Apparently, like this.

I love fairy tale retellings. One of the things I love about them is the feeling I get when I know what is going to happen, but I have no clue how. I love the process of ticking off those boxes of the basic Cinderella story. In any given retelling, you generally have a deserving but not high class girl, an evil stepmother, some questionable stepsisters, a ball, a prince (ideally one worth winning), a lost slipper, a fairy godmother, and a coach that is not what it seems. All of these elements don't need to be there, certainly, and it is often very difficult to sneak all of them in while retaining a veneer of originality, but there needs to be enough that it is recognizable, even if just barely, as the same story. It is a difficult job, honestly, to balance things just right, and as a sincere fan of the genre, I often am generous in my definition of "original," as well as in my definition of "interesting."

This book did not need any extra generosity. And no, I am not telling you which boxes it ticked, because that would take away half the fun.

Cinder herself was easy to root for and empathize with. She had the agency that a lot of Cinderellas lack, and I love to see that. She had interests and talents and a desire to escape that I don't often see in this story, and she even had a female friend to support her, albeit of an odd variety. She was spunky. I felt like a more modern telling of this story, and not just because it was set in a future time period.

I would like to state that I saw the reveal of

Cinder as the lost Lunar princess super early. That doesn't strictly bother me, but since that was such a divergence from the classic tale (and thus not guessable going in), it would have been nice to have been longer in suspense there.

I appreciated the building of a relationship between Cinder and Prince Kai, since I have never really enjoyed the "love at first sight" concept so prevalent in fairy tales. (That is probably at least partly why I love retellings so much, actually.) Kai was an intriguing character in his own right, and, while certainly not perfect, was fun to get to know. I appreciate that he was clever and driven to do right by his people, whatever he needed to sacrifice for that to happen.

There was a thread of something I felt like I should recognize throughout, yet I could not pinpoint. When, in the acknowledgments, Marissa Meyer gives a shout-out to "Sailor Moon fandom geeks," I finally realized what it was. And I loved that.

The entirety of the Lunar people and their politics was fascinating. It felt both very sci-fi and very classic fairy tale. I can't wait to hear more about them. I will be picking up the rest of the books in the series and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

It is really hard to review something I have read half a dozen times, but am re-reading for the first time in a decade.

I really love the creepy nightmare house game set-up. It made it easier to get to know several of the characters, and I just liked watching them overcome their worst nightmares. It felt like a sadistic game show and gee whiz am I a terrible person for taking such pleasure in that kind of thing.

I remember spending a great deal of time the first time I read this trying to figure out what I could draw that would seem realistic as a horrible fear for me but not be what I was most frightened of (probably spiders). I knew I could never make it through a room full of terrible tarantulas or something, so I was going to have to improvise so I didn't die (or get laughed at). As far as I remember, I never did come up with anything plausible, but it is strangely fun to think about while reading.

In general, the characters are good. Julian is kind of fascinating in a way that seems overdone today but that didn't seem so when I first read it. He seems very much the type of character made to appeal to a teenage girl, and thus my affection for him (while never fangirl-ish to begin with) has faded a bit.

Dee and Audrey are amusing as foils. I liked them both, although their bickering is annoying. Their nightmares taught me a lot about them. I feel like Jenny is easy enough to like, though I don't feel terribly attached or anything. Michael and Zach are completely adorable for obviously very different reasons.

I feel bad about not liking Summer, but there is really nothing there to like. She exists to be pathetic, sort of, and we don't ever really get to know her through her nightmares, unlike the rest of the group. She is very much like a small child, but without having the excuse of actually being a small child.

Tom is a lot more questionable. I feel like I know almost nothing about him even at the end of the book, and those small parts of what we know I don't really like. Mostly he seems to exist to take Jenny for granted and be kind of annoyingly boisterous. I don't really care for either of these character traits, and his relationship with Jenny seems to be due entirely to "they've known each other forever," which is not a terribly valid reason to remain together, I don't think. Especially when it was a relationship formed when they were actually children.

This is fun. That is kind of what I look for in an L.J. Smith book, honestly--she was a go-to author for a hefty chunk of my teenage years because I always enjoyed reading her stuff. Her plots are interesting, even when they aren't super detailed, her universe feels just different enough from ours to seem almost-barely plausible.

This started kind of slowly given the bang with which the last book ended.

Also, the idea that they should tell the police the truth in a situation like this? Terrible idea. What on earth were they thinking? They are super lucky they were considered traumatized and not insane or murderers. Or insane murderers.

Tom was creepy throughout. He was basically stalking her, but refusing to actually talk to her. I just don't like him and I don't really get why Jenny does.

I liked the little riddles to be solved and the eerieness of people disappearing one by one. This very much ended on a cliffhanger, which the first book managed to avoid. I am never a huge fan of them, but I do tolerate them in the middle book of a trilogy.

In general, I liked it. It was a quick little romp of horror with characters that I have (generally) grown to like.

The problem with this book is that I never got super invested. In anything. Except for that cover, which is legitimately amazing.

The world seemed interesting, but I always felt faintly outside of it. My reaction to even major plot twists was more "well that was interesting" than real horror or shock. I never got very attached to either of the main characters, and almost all of the side characters felt extremely one-dimensional.

Lonan's just problematic from the start. I began intrigued by his backstory, but the way it played out lost any real depth

once it absolved him of literally any responsiblity for the tragedy

. This becomes a running theme.

In general, he seems to exist for the other characters to revolve around him. There's a character we're supposed to hate because basically everything in the world wrong with Lonan's life is his fault, even when it feels very far-fetched. There's Lonan's love interest, who exists for him to long for, despite not having spoken to her for ages when the story starts.

There's an entire long scene in which Lonan goes on and on about how he forgives this person who has wronged him just before this person dies, to this person's face, and I was attempting to read it all with my head in my hands. It was horribly self-indulgent and I was cringing the whole time. (It also seemed very long, though how much of that was because I wanted it to be over before it started I don't know.) I think it was supposed to make us like Lonan more because he is so gosh darn forgiving, but it backfired really badly because all I could think was who does that?!

Admittedly there is also the old healer lady, Mother Ogma, who is kind of amazing in her own right. I would have loved to read a whole story about her.

The Magpie King and Adahy storyline was generally more interesting, but the pacing suffered due to the back-and-forth between that and Lonan's story. I also never quite got attached to anyone there (Adahy, despite being significantly more likeable than Lonan, was kind of oblivious), so it never really took off for me, despite a few interesting developments plot-wise.

The interludes with mythological characters throughout were not badly written and lent themselves well to the atmosphere of the story. The problem was I didn't enjoy them. A chunk of that was Artemis, our trickster character (an archetype I adore), was just a creep. You didn't feel intrigued watching his shenanigans. You weren't definitely rooting for him or rooting for him even though you knew you shouldn't because he was so charismatic. He was just kind of an asshole who somehow got away with things and for no real reason I could fathom they told stories about him. At one point I was rooting for a spider to eat him, and given my horror of the creatures, that should probably tell you enough.

The fact that the first story is an Artemis story probably soured my view on the ones that followed, even the ones with the Magpie King (though those were universally better, I feel).

The idea of magic as Knacks was interesting, and I'd like to have seen a bit more about that than I really got.

Overall I was just hoping for more than I got with this one.