While working as a mechanic at the marketplace, she meets the son of Emperor Rikan, Crown Prince Kai, who asks her to fix Nainsi, his former personal android.

Soon, Peony falls sick with Letumosis after accompanying Cinder to a local junkyard to collect spare parts for a repair.

He is also searching for information regarding the missing Lunar heir, Princess Selene, the daughter of Queen Channary Blackburn, Levana's late sister, who was said to have 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.

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.

Cinder also discovers a Lunar direct communication chip embedded in Nainsi, which was the reason for the android's initial breakdown.

Erland gives Cinder a new hand with objects hidden in the fingers and a foot 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.

[9] Kirkus Reviews wrote that the telepathic-enslaver theme was "simplistic and incongruous-feeling" but said that Cinder "offers a high coolness factor".

"[12] Reflecting on the novel's blend of fairy tale and steampunk motifs, literary scholar Terri Doughty concludes that Meyer "rewrites the meme of female passivity as Cinder works through a process of identity formation.

Compared to the novel's female characters that use traditional markers of femininity to disguise their manipulations and cruelties, the cyborg mechanic Cinder emerges as a positive role model for girls.

She is a "fairy tale geek", she has spent considerable time tracing the origins of the most common Western children's stories.

Additionally, some believe that the iconic lost slipper used to find the runaway girl came to us from China's tradition of foot-binding and a culture in which women were praised for tiny feet.

"[14] For this reason, Marissa Meyer decided to set her futuristic version in New Beijing, in order to "close the circle" and re-take the story to its original place.

[20] This collection included nine stories, five of which have never been published and an excerpt of Marissa Meyer's stand alone novel, Heartless, which was released on November 8, 2016.