Cinder is a cyborg—part human, part machine—living in a futuristic New Beijing. Technology appears everywhere, from ID scanners embedded in every human, cyborg, or android, to netscreens that communicate a variety of information from news to gossip. Cinder’s cyborg status offers her a perspective ideal for her work as a mechanic. In fact, she is known as the best and sole full-service mechanic at the weekly market. Although skilled in her trade, Cinder hides any evidence of her cyborg parts due the undervaluing and shunning of her kind.

At the weekly market, Cinder, as usual, covers her steel left hand and mechanical leg and foot with work gloves, cargo pants, and boots. Sitting behind the table at her booth, Cinder replaces a snug and uncomfortable foot she wore for four years with an improved replacement. However, immediately after the removal and placement of the old foot on her worktable, a young man, hooded for disguise, arrives at her booth with the request to fix an old android. This is Prince Kaito, son of the emperor. Looking for Linh Cinder, and surprised that Cinder is not an old man, he speaks to her with informality and humor: “He wasn’t the first to

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