Cinder

by Marissa Meyer

The story is set in a futuristic city, New Beijing, when the countries of the world have re-organized to form various new empires and alliances and the Moon has been colonized. Asia is now an emperor-ruled country known as the Eastern Commonwealth. Letumosis, a fatal disease started by the Lunars and nicknamed the "Blue Fever," or “The Plague” is raging throughout the world and the cure is unknown. Cinder is under the guardianship of her cruel adopted mother, Linh Adri along with her two stepsisters, Linh Pearl and Linh Peony, the latter of which treats her as a close friend. As a cyborg, Cinder is discriminated against and often looked down upon by others, despite building up a reputation as the best mechanic in New Beijing.

While working as a mechanic at the marketplace, she meets the son of the Emperor, Prince Kai, who asks her to fix Nainsi, his personal android. Cyborgs are treated as second class citizens, so Cinder hides her identity from Kai. Soon, Peony falls sick with letumosis after accompanying Cinder to a junkyard to collect spare parts for a repair. In anger (Cinder's adopted father had died of letumosis as well), Linh Adri "volunteers" Cinder, a cyborg, for plague research which no one survives from. When Cinder is injected with the strain of letumosis, it is discovered that she is immune to the disease. Dr. Erland, the head researcher, starts to do research on Cinder’s immunity, which leads to research on Cinder’s unique physiology, her cyborg implants, and eventually to Cinder’s life prior to becoming a cyborg at the age of eleven, which Cinder has no memory of.

At the same time, Prince Kai's father, Emperor Rikan, dies of the plague, resulting in the prince becoming Emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth at 17. There is pressure to create an alliance between the Earth countries and the Moon country, Luna, led by the tyrannical and manipulative Queen Levana. The Lunars have the ability to manipulate the bioelectricity of people around them and make them see what they want them to see and even control their thoughts and actions. The proposed alliance is through Emperor Kai marrying Queen Levana, however, Emperor Kai wants to thwart this plan by finding someone else to marry first. He is also searching for information regarding the rightful Lunar heir Princess Selene the daughter of the late Lunar Queen Channary Blackburn, Levana's late sister, who was said to had died in a fire in her nursery when she was three but a body was never found, which was what his android was researching before it broke. Earthens believed that somehow Princess Selene, Levana's late sister, survived the nursery fire. To bribe Kai into going through with the marriage, Levana brings one vial of the letumosis antidote, which Cinder attempts to save Peony with, but is too late afterward giving it to a little boy named Chang Sunto who recovered from The Plague and would later make headline news. After Peony's death, Cinder stores Peony's ID chip and takes it with her after discovering that the victims' chips are harvested after their deaths for an unknown reason. Because of this (and thinking that Cinder taunted Peony with the antidote instead of trying to save her), Linh Adri punishes Cinder by smashing Iko, Cinder's companion android and friend, to pieces and selling the valuable pieces, leaving only Iko's personality chip, and banning her from going to the annual peace ball.

Dr. Erland reveals to Cinder that she is Lunar, resulting in her immunity to letumosis. However, Cinder displays no Lunar abilities, supposedly making her a shell, or a Lunar without any bioelectricity manipulation abilities. Dr. Erland also reveals that he is a Lunar fugitive who has been living on Earth. He had turned against Luna after his own newborn shell daughter had been taken away as per the Lunar shell infanticide laws, as shells cannot control or be controlled by the Lunar abilities and are thus supposedly a threat to Lunars. Cinder fixes Nainsi and discovers that he and Nainsi have been researching Princess Selene, who is believed to have been killed by her aunt, Levana, when she was a child in order to eliminate her only threat to the throne. Cinder also discovers a Lunar direct communication chip embedded in Nainsi, which was the reason for the android's initial breakdown. Through the Lunar chip, which is revealed to be used for direct communication outside the network, Cinder is contacted by a Lunar girl - revealed in the third novel to be Cress - who warns that Levana intends to marry Kai and kill him after she becomes empress.

The story culminates with an annual ball, which Cinder crashes but is then revealed and announced to be Kai's special guest. Cinder warns Kai about Levana's ulterior motives and to call off any wedding plans, but Levana intervenes and points out that Cinder is a Lunar shell fugitive, and should be taken into her custody for trial. Levana attempts to brainwash Cinder into shooting herself but Cinder resists the attempt and fires a pistol at Levana. After a standoff where she ends up trying to escape, running off and tripping on stairs causing her to lose her foot, Kai has no choice but to arrest Cinder in the New Beijing Prison and agree to hand Cinder over to Levana to save the Earth from war. Later, in Cinder's prison cell, Dr. Erland visits and reveals that Cinder is actually the lost Princess Selene. Erland gives Cinder a new arm with things in the fingers and leg made of titanium, and convinces her to escape on her own in order to join him in Africa so that she began her training to overthrow Levana and take back her throne.