The Little Android by Marissa Meyer

This is the third Lunar Chronicles story I downloaded from Wattpad.  It's different from the other two in that it's more of a standalone; the only character from the Lunar Chronicles that features in it is Cinder, and she's only in it for a couple of pages.

The Little Android is based on the story of the Little Mermaid.  A mechanic android, Mech 6.0, has an unusual fascination with humans and when a new engineer comes to work in her shipyard she falls desperately in love with him.

The Little Android was such a sweet story and even though we only see Mech 6.0/Star for the equivalent of maybe a couple of chapters, I got a real sense of who  she was.  The author managed to incorporate all of the elements of the Little Mermaid story in, but within the  Lunar Chronicles world.  Plus, I loved the casting of Cinder as Ursula the Sea Witch!  Very cool.

All the way through this story, I was biting my nails, wondering whether Marissa Meyer was going to give us the Disney HEA ending, or the proper creepy Hans Christian Andersen ending.  I won't tell you which one she plumps for in case you decide to read it yourself, but just suffice to say the ending is good.

All in all, I really enjoyed the three Lunar Chronicles stories I read on Wattpad.  They're probably not as polished as her traditionally published books, but they're still really interesting little tales and give some really nice insight.

I also think it's really cool when authors do projects like this and just put some short stories out there for free, just for themselves and the fans.  And yeah, I suppose you could be cynical and say it's a marketing ploy to drive sales, but I think it shows how much the author loves the world she's built and even when she's not writing her 'proper' books, she's still thinking of other little stories within that world.

So very cool.