This is probably one of the hardest reviews I've ever written. I had no intention of reading Cinder but I made a deal with Andrea from The Overstuffed Bookcase to read it, so I did. On one hand I really liked it, but on the other hand I didn't like it at all. I kept changing how I felt about the book the whole way through. 
 First of all Marissa Meyer is a fantastic writer. I am not a science fiction fan at all and the ones that I do like are light enough on the science fiction that I can get past it. Cinder is pretty heavy on the science fiction part for me and despite my distaste for aliens, cyborgs, androids, etc Meyer really made me care about what happened and about the characters. Even though I know the aspects I didn't like in the book aren't going to go away I know that I will read Scarlet. Meyer is just that good. 
 Cinder is a fabulous retelling of Cinderella. It was written so well, so seamlessly, that this could have been the original. Sometimes with retellings the key points in the original can be left out or tossed into the story without it making much sense but that was not the case with Cinder. 
 I loved all of the characters, I can't find fault with any of them. Cinder went through so much and then had not one, but two complete bombshells dropped on her (one of which I totally saw coming) and went through so much. I loved her sidekick Iko. Cinder's step mother (aka: owner) was a lot of words I won't say here but she definitely fit into the roll. I could have smacked her, more than once. Prince Kai had a lot on his plate in addition to his attraction to Cinder. I was slightly disappointed in that part of the book, but since there are 2 more books I'm not too worried about it. 
 I'm not a big fan of robots/cyborgs/androids etc, but with Meyer's writing it was fairly easy for me to get past that. It was not so easy for me to get past the alien aspect of the book. I realize that the Lunar's aren't regular aliens, but more of an evolutionized human (they have special qualities) but they come from the moon so... alien. It helped that they looked like humans, just with some special qualities, but there were times when the alienness was just too much for me.