The tagline for this young adult novel is "In a world of extreme beauty, anyone normal is ugly." And thus it begins.
The time is hundreds of years in the future, after people like you and me have royally screwed the world over. The people who were left decided to patch things up and make the world better than it was. The theory holds that all the problems in our world were created because people were different, so the solution is to make everyone "pretty" through a series of operations you undergo at age 16.
Our protagonist, Tally Youngblood, is anxious to turn pretty. She hates her ugly self--as she's been trained to do--and her best friend turned pretty 3 months earlier. She wants to get herself all dolled up and moved into New Pretty Town ASAP! But then she meets Shay, another Ugly like herself. Shay doesn't want to turn pretty. She wants to stay ugly (i.e. NORMAL) and just be herself. Tally doesn't follow this radical line of thinking, but her world is turned upside down when Shay runs away only days before Tally's operation. Shay's headed for The Smoke--hundreds of miles away, and home of a ragged group of bandit Uglies who refuse to follow the system. The Establishment, if you will, give Tally a terrible choice: find Shay and turn her in, or stay ugly forever.
No spoilers here--but Westerfeld does a great job of pulling the reader into this "world o' the future." There's action, comedy, romance and philosophy for everyone; there's obviously a great message about loving yourself for who you are and not just for physical beauty. And there's a sequel! I'm excited to read it (Pretties), and I was really impressed with the author's ability to lead you into the sequel without it feeling like, "I want to write another book so we're going to create this new problem." It felt really natural that we'd need to see the next part of the story. I'm a fan.
A solid B+ on my score card.
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3 comments:
I shelve this book, and it's sequel all the time, and I've always kind of , sort of, wanted to read it, and now I think I will! Thanks for the review/description (much better than the back of the book).
I'm with Beth. You make a good case for the book. I'll have to go take a look.
Puddlejumpers finally came in at the library. I hope to have a review for you by the end of this week.
So I read it, and Pretties and Specials, liking each book less, and less. I have to say I probably would've graded uglies with a B, or so, and Specials, to me ended with a D. How many times can you be manipulated by the same person, at some point you don't trust them. sigh
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