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Uglies series (Uglies/Pretties/Specials/Extras), by Scott Westerfeld
Uglies
/ Pretties
/ Specials
/ Extras
, by Scott Westerfeld
Tally can't wait until she turns sixteen: then she'll get the surgery to become Pretty, move to New Pretty Town and enjoy constant entertainment and parties, and—most importantly—be reunited with her best friend Peris, who, being a few months older than her, is already Pretty and enjoying his new life without her. But while she's waiting, alone, for her sixteenth birthday, Tally meets Shay. Shay is the same age as Tally, and is an exciting daredevil with a fascination with history of the old Rusty civilizations... and she's not as enthused as Tally about getting a shot at being Pretty. But when Shay runs away, Tally finds out that everything's more complicated than she had suspected.
The Uglies series is fairly distant-future science fiction, set in a world that sought to resolve the inequities of human life and the problems of ecological depredation (after "our" society collapsed and burned, literally) in two ways. First, most human needs (both material and emotional) are satisfied by the city; second, the city makes everyone look the same: everyone is Pretty. (You may be thinking, as I was, that that's overly simplistic, but the book does know that. It's just that Tally doesn't know that, not from the start.) But the price of being both beautiful and well-cared-for is relying wholly on the city, and its omnipresent monitoring, and its secretive leaders.
Tally doesn't care about that at the beginning: she's fifteen, almost sixteen, and she misses her friend, and she wants to join the 24-7 party going on in New Pretty Town. This probably makes her sound pretty shallow, but it's a) pretty believable to me, and b) part of her character trajectory in a way I find very satisfying. One of the things I liked about the book is the way Tally matured and grew throughout, not only in terms of learning about the society she lives in but also in that she discovered strengths and a moral core of her own. And she does it gradually, rather than by large Important Epiphanies. To put it another way: she grows up. And a big part of how and why she grows up lies in her tumultuous friendship with Shay.
While reading this, I wound up thinking a great deal of the "Female Friendship in Fantasy" panel at Sirens. Tally and Shay are best friends, and yet they wind up at odds with each other regularly (sometimes in romantic conflicts, but often not). While I might have preferred a bit less in the way of romantic conflict, I did like that that wasn't the only thing they wound up arguing over, and I liked that the relationship between Tally and Shay was the most important one in the books. That's not something you see all that often. And it did remind me of a few of my friendships over the years. (I also liked that neither Tally nor Shay was wholly right, when they argued. Often one was partly right and the other was, too, or one was perhaps more purely morally right while the other was more pragmatic, or both had totally sympathetic reasons for being at odds. And it wasn't all about "girl rivalries:" they really were friends, which made the times they were at odds all the more affecting.)
I also appreciated the way the plot snapped along, lively and compelling. I kept reading on because it was really hard to stop.
The series isn't perfect: the story stumbled a little before it caught its stride (I wasn't totally hooked until the second book, Pretties), and I wasn't always sure of motivations of certain characters, and—while I liked the romances, actually—I wasn't as enamored of the romantic rivalries (although they were thankfully not the focus of the story). But the books do a good job of keeping up tension and interest without becoming repetitive or overly grim, and I read the whole quartet in about two days. The plot just zips along. I like that.
The other thing I noticed was Westerfeld's hand with invented slang. I know that any discussion of invented slang tends to be very personal and hard to quantify beyond "it worked for me" or "it didn't work for me"—and I know that there are certainly people for whom the slang in the Uglies series didn't work—but it did work for me. (With the occasional exception, but overall, it worked.) I found the slang believable as slang, and I didn't have any trouble following it.
It's hard to speak of anything but the first half of the first book in anything but the vaguest terms without spoiling, partly because the end of each book contains a major hairpin turn. (I am, in retrospect, glad I am reading them now that the whole series is complete.) So I'll continue under the cut, with the understanding that there are potentially book-breaking spoilers for all four books there.
One thing I really appreciated, plot-wise, was the way each book ended with a hairpin turn that lead inexorably to the next. At the end of Uglies, Tally becomes a Pretty... something she'd wanted the whole book, but now she got it with its guts ripped out: in the full knowledge that it means she will be brain damaged. At the end of Pretties, Tally is reconfigured into a Special—against her will—in the full knowledge that it means that she will lose a lot of her moral sense and ability to bond with other humans. The ending of Specials is a bit more ambiguous (presumably because Extras isn't part of the same tight plot arc as the first three—it's more a related book than a sequel), but at the end of Specials, Tally runs off into the woods and swears to protect the environment against the cities... and the plot of Extras has to do with a splinter group of people who are trying to move to space to protect the planet from them: they're doing the same thing Tally is, but in a different way.
And while in retrospect the quick reversal at the end of each book, leading into the next book, might have looked artificial... while reading it, it didn't feel artificial at all. I appreciated that.
Tally wound up seriously affected by all the things that happened to her (first denied Pretty-dom, then thrust against her will into the Smoke, then forced into Pretty-dom, then forcibly made a Special, etc.), but I hate using the word "broken" for characters, and anyway I don't think Tally was broken. Metamorphosed, yes. Traumatized, yes. But she kept growing, kept evolving, kept adapting to her circumstances... and indeed, that seemed to be her greatest ability: that she could adapt.
In some ways, it was her adaptability that was her greatest vice as well as her greatest virtue. Shay accused her of looking out for number one, and in a lot of ways Shay was not wrong. Tally's greatest virtue was that she could adjust and adapt to anything, could do whatever she needed to survive... and her greatest vice was that she would adjust and adapt to anything, would do whatever she needed to survive. I really liked that conflict, and the way that Tally resolved it by fleeing the society that would force her to become something she hated to survive, so she could learn to become something admirable instead.
I also love that, as of Extras, she had not yet learned how to become something admirable.
Recommended, especially if you like science fiction that explores social issues and social programming.
A caveat: as is probably obvious even from the titles, this is a series that deals with what it means to be pretty (or Pretty), what it means to not be pretty, what it means to be unusual, and so on. Especially early in the series, Tally is bluntly critical of her own "ugly" (normal) appearance, and longs to undergo her society's coming-of-age surgery and become beautiful. In addition, the series deals with brain modification and brain damage in an unflinching way. This is, absolutely, not something the series accepts uncritically (quite the opposite, in fact), but if you're likely to find a lot of discussion of physical appearance and/or brain modification triggering, well, then you probably ought to know.
/ Pretties / Specials / Extras, by Scott WesterfeldTally can't wait until she turns sixteen: then she'll get the surgery to become Pretty, move to New Pretty Town and enjoy constant entertainment and parties, and—most importantly—be reunited with her best friend Peris, who, being a few months older than her, is already Pretty and enjoying his new life without her. But while she's waiting, alone, for her sixteenth birthday, Tally meets Shay. Shay is the same age as Tally, and is an exciting daredevil with a fascination with history of the old Rusty civilizations... and she's not as enthused as Tally about getting a shot at being Pretty. But when Shay runs away, Tally finds out that everything's more complicated than she had suspected.
The Uglies series is fairly distant-future science fiction, set in a world that sought to resolve the inequities of human life and the problems of ecological depredation (after "our" society collapsed and burned, literally) in two ways. First, most human needs (both material and emotional) are satisfied by the city; second, the city makes everyone look the same: everyone is Pretty. (You may be thinking, as I was, that that's overly simplistic, but the book does know that. It's just that Tally doesn't know that, not from the start.) But the price of being both beautiful and well-cared-for is relying wholly on the city, and its omnipresent monitoring, and its secretive leaders.
Tally doesn't care about that at the beginning: she's fifteen, almost sixteen, and she misses her friend, and she wants to join the 24-7 party going on in New Pretty Town. This probably makes her sound pretty shallow, but it's a) pretty believable to me, and b) part of her character trajectory in a way I find very satisfying. One of the things I liked about the book is the way Tally matured and grew throughout, not only in terms of learning about the society she lives in but also in that she discovered strengths and a moral core of her own. And she does it gradually, rather than by large Important Epiphanies. To put it another way: she grows up. And a big part of how and why she grows up lies in her tumultuous friendship with Shay.
While reading this, I wound up thinking a great deal of the "Female Friendship in Fantasy" panel at Sirens. Tally and Shay are best friends, and yet they wind up at odds with each other regularly (sometimes in romantic conflicts, but often not). While I might have preferred a bit less in the way of romantic conflict, I did like that that wasn't the only thing they wound up arguing over, and I liked that the relationship between Tally and Shay was the most important one in the books. That's not something you see all that often. And it did remind me of a few of my friendships over the years. (I also liked that neither Tally nor Shay was wholly right, when they argued. Often one was partly right and the other was, too, or one was perhaps more purely morally right while the other was more pragmatic, or both had totally sympathetic reasons for being at odds. And it wasn't all about "girl rivalries:" they really were friends, which made the times they were at odds all the more affecting.)
I also appreciated the way the plot snapped along, lively and compelling. I kept reading on because it was really hard to stop.
The series isn't perfect: the story stumbled a little before it caught its stride (I wasn't totally hooked until the second book, Pretties), and I wasn't always sure of motivations of certain characters, and—while I liked the romances, actually—I wasn't as enamored of the romantic rivalries (although they were thankfully not the focus of the story). But the books do a good job of keeping up tension and interest without becoming repetitive or overly grim, and I read the whole quartet in about two days. The plot just zips along. I like that.
The other thing I noticed was Westerfeld's hand with invented slang. I know that any discussion of invented slang tends to be very personal and hard to quantify beyond "it worked for me" or "it didn't work for me"—and I know that there are certainly people for whom the slang in the Uglies series didn't work—but it did work for me. (With the occasional exception, but overall, it worked.) I found the slang believable as slang, and I didn't have any trouble following it.
It's hard to speak of anything but the first half of the first book in anything but the vaguest terms without spoiling, partly because the end of each book contains a major hairpin turn. (I am, in retrospect, glad I am reading them now that the whole series is complete.) So I'll continue under the cut, with the understanding that there are potentially book-breaking spoilers for all four books there.
One thing I really appreciated, plot-wise, was the way each book ended with a hairpin turn that lead inexorably to the next. At the end of Uglies, Tally becomes a Pretty... something she'd wanted the whole book, but now she got it with its guts ripped out: in the full knowledge that it means she will be brain damaged. At the end of Pretties, Tally is reconfigured into a Special—against her will—in the full knowledge that it means that she will lose a lot of her moral sense and ability to bond with other humans. The ending of Specials is a bit more ambiguous (presumably because Extras isn't part of the same tight plot arc as the first three—it's more a related book than a sequel), but at the end of Specials, Tally runs off into the woods and swears to protect the environment against the cities... and the plot of Extras has to do with a splinter group of people who are trying to move to space to protect the planet from them: they're doing the same thing Tally is, but in a different way.
And while in retrospect the quick reversal at the end of each book, leading into the next book, might have looked artificial... while reading it, it didn't feel artificial at all. I appreciated that.
Tally wound up seriously affected by all the things that happened to her (first denied Pretty-dom, then thrust against her will into the Smoke, then forced into Pretty-dom, then forcibly made a Special, etc.), but I hate using the word "broken" for characters, and anyway I don't think Tally was broken. Metamorphosed, yes. Traumatized, yes. But she kept growing, kept evolving, kept adapting to her circumstances... and indeed, that seemed to be her greatest ability: that she could adapt.
In some ways, it was her adaptability that was her greatest vice as well as her greatest virtue. Shay accused her of looking out for number one, and in a lot of ways Shay was not wrong. Tally's greatest virtue was that she could adjust and adapt to anything, could do whatever she needed to survive... and her greatest vice was that she would adjust and adapt to anything, would do whatever she needed to survive. I really liked that conflict, and the way that Tally resolved it by fleeing the society that would force her to become something she hated to survive, so she could learn to become something admirable instead.
I also love that, as of Extras, she had not yet learned how to become something admirable.
Recommended, especially if you like science fiction that explores social issues and social programming.
A caveat: as is probably obvious even from the titles, this is a series that deals with what it means to be pretty (or Pretty), what it means to not be pretty, what it means to be unusual, and so on. Especially early in the series, Tally is bluntly critical of her own "ugly" (normal) appearance, and longs to undergo her society's coming-of-age surgery and become beautiful. In addition, the series deals with brain modification and brain damage in an unflinching way. This is, absolutely, not something the series accepts uncritically (quite the opposite, in fact), but if you're likely to find a lot of discussion of physical appearance and/or brain modification triggering, well, then you probably ought to know.
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? It didn't seem farther from now than Newton and Shakespeare are. Distant future has to be at least long enough for significant evolutionary, geological or astronomical change, doesn't it?
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I happily admit that other people have different definitions. (And, indeed, I read very little far-future SF except for space opera, so.)
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1: We suck.
2: Suddenly everything explodes because we suck.
3: The few survivors create the society we see, creating new kinds of suck in opposition to the old kinds of suck.
4: Profit!
SPOILERS FOR THE HUNGER GAMES SERIES HERE!
It makes a fascinating compare-and-contrast to The Hunger Games, too.
Both have survival-driven protagonists with altruistic streaks - a quest for popularity and acceptance actually is a survival trait for a prosperous member of a prosperous society, though that wasn't obvious to me until I could look at it in retrospect.
Both have love triangles, though HG played theirs up more. You can even map Gale to David (the rugged country boy) and Peeta to Zane (the pretty, sophisticated boy). (I liked Zane better and Gale better, but more because I never much warmed to their rival. Peeta always struck me as a little stalkery.) Both also cheat with the triangle's resolution by taking one contender out of the running. (As a student wrote in a paper for Sherwood once, "And then the hand of fate stepped in.")
HG would have been improved immensely if there had been a Shay-equivalent. Rue was killed in the first book, and Prim wasn't really Katniss's friend.
HG would have also been more interesting if we'd had the equivalent of Specials/Extras - if we'd seen more of what happened during the revolution, and some of what happened afterward.
Finally, the way that Tally changed due to trauma was a million times more interesting than the way Katniss did - and while all people are different, I've seen more survivor-types become more jittery and hostile and obsessed with surviving than I've seen them collapse into total passivity. The consuming desire to survive is the hallmark of a survivor - if a survivor is sleeping in supply closets, she's probably conserving her energy, laying low while bad shit is going down, or taking a much-needed small nervous breakdown before she has to get up and go on with things.
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