Cinder

I haven't written many reviews here, but I feel this one is necessary to balance out the glut of “love it or hate it” I'm seeing here. More of the former than the latter, because in all honesty this is a perfectly serviceable book. It's functionally well-written, there aren't any glaring errors or problems, the author has a vision, and they execute it well. Unlike the numerous one-stars, overall I'd say I enjoyed it (as opposed to just tolerating it).

However, there seems to be a dearth of middle of the road reviews, which is more applicable to my experience. It's decent but not really my cup of tea. This is a middling, somewhat shallow approach to a good idea. It's a problem somewhat endemic to this kind of YA genre story. I couldn't really sink my teeth in, so to speak, and most of the book was rather heavy-handed with telling instead of showing, when a touch of subtlety would have gone miles to improve the experience.

A recurring sort of turn-off came from the repeated insistence on trying to impress the reader with “cool” technological stuff. The only thing I found well integrated was Cinder's lie detector, because it became an instinctual, human+ kind of function, unlike the focus on clinical countdowns and decimal-precison. If the focus of your story isn't on a character's stuggle to maintain their humanity (which, despite lip-service, this story is not), then cybernetics should serve to alter the character's abilities in a natural fashion, not overload them with terminal printouts and raw source code which would be pretty much useless to all of us.

I'm hoping things get a little better in the next books as the author gains some experience. Like it or not, I'm committed and curious to see where the story goes.