Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (series)

At long last, my review of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series! I have to make a confession though; I'd read the first two books earlier when I was in high school, but the last two books weren't out yet so I sort of forgot about them and picked them up again on the recommendation of another friend. She said they were excellent, and I definitely remembered the first two being really good, so I picked up the whole series over winter break and sped through them.

There are four books in the series, Uglies, Pretties, Specials and Extras. Technically, the first three books are a trilogy and the last book was a follow-up with a different main character and everything. At the start of Uglies, we are thrown into a world in the distant future where our society, which they refer to as "the Rusties" has long disintegrated due to a chaotic event. This chaotic event, we learn later, involves a virus spreading through oil and so on and making it combust. We are not going to talk about the scientific logic behind that, but suffice to say that I did my undergrad in science and thought ". . . what?" Anyway. Fantasy is not a place for real science, so we'll let that go. Their society, we quickly learn, is very strictly controlled. For your average everyday citizen, anything you like comes out of a hole in the wall, but you are strictly defined by your age. Before you are 12, you are referred to as a Littlie, and you live with your parents in their equivalence of suburbia. At 12, you move to Uglyville, where you wait desperately for your 16th birthday where you finally undergo plastic surgery to make you a beautiful pretty, and you move to the Prettytown where you get to party all day and night and never worry about anything. At some point, it's assumed you take up a career and move on to become a Middle Pretty, and move out to suburbia where you have your own Littlies and so on. Our main character, Tally, is an Ugly desperately waiting to turn pretty. Her best friend, Peris, has already turned pretty months ago and seemed to have forgotten her. At this point, she meets a new friend, Shay, who introduces her to the idea of what it would be like to not become pretty. The justification behind the pretty operation is that it would eliminate discrimination, because everyone would be equally pretty and have equal opportunities. Shay, however, suspects they are taking away some of her individuality with it and before the operation runs away to the Smoke, a secret community of people that have almost all foregone the operation and are investigating the true reasons and risks behind the surgery itself. Tally is denied the operation until she goes after Shay and targets the Smoke for the leaders. There, Tally learns that the operation is actually designed to modify the individual's brain in order to be continually happy, rarely angry, and generally bubble-headed (hence the continual partying). The first three books covers the struggle between the Smoke and the city.

The fourth book covers the aftermath, in a different city in the world. It takes place in (presumably) Japan. The first trilogy took place, it is understood, somewhere in North America. In the cultural renaissance after the overthrow of the pretty-minded operations, everyone competes for face rank. The world in this city is a popularity contest, where people are ranked on how popular they are and are accorded resources, such as money, based on the rank. The main character, Aya Fuse, is dead smack in the middle; her face rank is in the hundred thousands, and she wants to be as popular as her older brother and others. She hits on a major story when she finds evidence that another city may be stockpiling weapons, and in doing so puts herself at risk.

Obviously, summarizing four books in one go isn't going to work. Still, I hope that's given you enough to understand the rest of the review.

One of the major themes, first off, is definitely individuality. The whole point of the pretty operation is to deny individuality, and thereby deny any reason for people to get angry at each other and argue. By associating it with plastic surgery, I think the author makes an important point about plastic surgery as a whole; you can't be yourself if you are someone else. One thing I like about the series is that the characters who do undergo pretty surgery at some point (including Shay and Tally) change drastically when they do so. Shay turns from someone very individualistic, responsible, and independent into someone who lacks all three of those traits; the Pretty Shay cares mainly about clothing, parties, and being accepted into the clique. Tally herself makes a similar change. Westerfeld makes this point even clearer with the Specials surgery, which is introduced in Book 2, which is designed to make someone stronger, faster, and better prepared to make decisions. Mostly, this just makes Specials very arrogant because they end up believing they are better than others and know what's best for everyone. When both Shay and Tally undergo this operation, they likewise make another big change in personality. Tally goes from self-blame and doubt to someone very proud, who is unable to accept that she is ever wrong. In general, given today's society and especially the American acceptance of plastic surgery, Westerfeld makes a point that needs to be made.

The major problem I had with this series as a whole is actually entirely the fourth book. There isn't a reason for the fourth book to exist. While it seems like Westerfeld is trying to make a point about popularity and how meaningless and dangerous it potentially could be, he doesn't succeed because really, the main character Aya doesn't face any negative consequences for her fame-chasing. When she hits it big, even though she makes the wrong conclusions about her facts and has to correct them later after a bit of an epic adventure . . . there is never any real danger because it turns out "the enemy" isn't a real enemy at all! We believe it is for some time, but when it all comes out it is the most anti-climactic thing that I've read in a very long time. The fourth book, Extras, is very clearly an extra itself and really . . . I didn't get as much meaning out of it as I got from the first three books.

That said, I'd recommend the first three books, particularly for a teenage audience. However, I'd give the fourth one a skip, unless you are really, really into the world that Westerfeld's created.