Cinder

Cinder is the 2012 debut young adult science fiction novel of the American author Marissa Meyer, published by Macmillan through the subsidiary Feiwel and Friends. It is the first book in The Lunar Chronicles and is followed by Scarlet. The story is loosely based on the fairy tale Cinderella.

Linh Cinder is sixteen and under the guardianship of her stepmother, Linh Adri, along with two stepsisters, Linh Pearl and Linh Peony, the latter of whom treats her as a friend. As a cyborg she is discriminated against and held in low regard, which is the social position the novel inherits from the fairy tale and reworks into a science fiction setting. New Beijing is crowded with humans and androids, a plague is killing the population, and a lunar people are watching from orbit, which is the situation the fairy-tale material has been moved into. The plague is also why her stepsister's illness matters so much to the household.

The novel was selected for IndieBound's Kids' Next List for winter 2012 and appeared on the New York Times children's chapter book list.