This month's pick is from Sharlene (too busy ushering new nieces into the world to post--congrats!)--Uglies, by Scott Westerfield.
Here's a synopsis from Amazon:
Playing on every teen’s passionate desire to look as good as everybody else, Scott Westerfeld projects a future world in which a compulsory operation at sixteen wipes out physical differences and makes everyone pretty by conforming to an ideal standard of beauty. The "New Pretties" are then free to play and party, while the younger "Uglies" look on enviously and spend the time before their own transformations in plotting mischievous tricks against their elders. Tally Youngblood is one of the most daring of the Uglies, and her imaginative tricks have gotten her in trouble with the menacing department of Special Circumstances. She has yearned to be pretty, but since her best friend Shay ran away to the rumored rebel settlement of recalcitrant Uglies called The Smoke, Tally has been troubled. The authorities give her an impossible choice: either she follows Shay’s cryptic directions to The Smoke with the purpose of betraying the rebels, or she will never be allowed to become pretty. Hoping to rescue Shay, Tally sets off on the dangerous journey as a spy. But after finally reaching The Smoke she has a change of heart when her new lover David reveals to her the sinister secret behind becoming pretty.
3 comments:
I have to admit when I first picked this up, I wasn't really expecting much from it. I mean, another Brave New World, another book about a utopia gone sour--how many times can you read the same story, you know? BUT--
I really, really liked it! Westerfeld developed a really good bit of conflict between the characters and some good suspense--by the end, I hated that I couldn't keep reading (blasted trilogies). And too--at first, it seemed such a simple world--"New Pretty Town" for cryin' out loud--but by the end of the book, that simplicity made sense and really fit--and the book had become just as real as Tally's world had become--from something fabricated and disposable into something with real depth.
One thing though--why weren't there any children produced in the Smoke? (Other than David, I mean.) Seems like it had been around long enough, and people being what they are, it seems like there should have been a few littlies running around.
"Finding purchase"? I missed that one--and I'm glad I did. Once you start to notice a cliche phrase of an author's, it gets hard to ignore...
And didn't the rest of the Smokies just get shipped back to their home towns and end up pretty? Or were there supposed to be more Smokies that were held in Special Circumstances? I lose track of some details like that. And as for Seattle--sure, why not? (My sense of geography is about as poor as it gets. North, south, left, right, Minnesota or Michigan--what's the difference?)
And one more thing--I spelled the author's name wrong in the original post--and probably in the email, too--sorry, Mr. Westerfeld.
Okay, I read the next book, "Pretties," and I liked it, too--but since it's been a little while since I read "Uglies"...well, I think it would have been better if I could have picked up "Pretties" immediately after reading the first one. The emotional impact and overall experience would've been greater. Buuuuut...it was still good, the tension and suspense was still great, and the romance gets more complex. And it ends with another cliffhanger, and you can't help but be tortured by it, because once again, it's the last direction you want to take the book to take before it suddenly...gasp...ENDS. Darn it.
And now, the third book in the series, "Specials," is sitting on my desk unopened, and I'd really like to get to it now...
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