My Absolute Favorite Book Series

OKAY. So excuse me if I get a little bit excited, but for this week I read the last book of my favorite book series of all time: the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. The original trilogy includes Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. This is a science fiction series about a futuristic distopian society. From the ages of 12-15, kids are referred to as "Uglies" because they are out of their cute kid-phase, but also they are pre-operation. On their 16th birthdays, kids get a plastic surgery makeover- giving them clear glowing skin, prettier eyes, smaller waists, bigger muscles, thicker hair, longer legs, smaller noses, bigger lips, etc. After their operation, they are allowed to live in New Pretty Town where there are beautiful skyscrapers, and parties with champagne and fireworks every single night. What they don't know, is that when they get the operation, lesions are added to their brains to keep them from thinking as an individual, and to keep them from questioning the government and the system. The main character, Tally, escapes from her town and runs away. She meets a hidden society of runaways who have come up with a cure to the lesions. Tally and her friends try to basically expose the government (the Specials)  for the monsters that they are, but in order to do that, Tally has to become a pretty herself.
What's interesting is that I can see this kind of society being a reality. As society becomes more and more obsessed with appearance and more and more mesmerized by the beautiful, looks become even more important, and intelligence and independence and uniqueness (unfortunately) is viewed as dangerous rather than progressive.

The science-y gadget-y stuff in this series is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that Westerfeld released an entirely separate book that serves as a guide to the gadgets and such. His predictions of technology were really well thought out. The guide also contains sketches of not only the gadgets, but also of maps of the city. Here's a sketch of the center of Tally's city:

Extras is a fourth book that takes place years after Tally's story is completed. Extras centers around a new character named Aya, who is nowhere near as developed of a character as Tally. Tally's character arc is leagues more interesting that Aya's partly because Tally had three books dedicated to her story and Aya was only given one. Tally and her boyfriend, David, show up randomly at the end of the book in order to almost "insure the audience" that Tally and David really truly did turn out alright after the Uglies, Pretties, Specials adventure was all said and done. This frustrated me so much because I wanted to know more about what happened to Tally in the years after Specials. I went into Extras hoping to have closure for the characters, but what I got was a watered down, vague, and unsatisfying nudge in one direction. To be fair, originally Westerfeld wasn't even going to write a fourth book, but fans wanted more so badly that he humored us with Extras. As always, the writing is wonderful and the story is wonderful, but since I was going into the book expecting one thing from it and was left empty handed, I almost wish he hadn't bothered to link Extras to the rest of the trilogy. I almost wish he has started a new trilogy with the new generation of characters under the same concept. I feel like I would have been able to appreciate the story more. Then, as the second trilogy progressed, he could relate it back to Tally and how she changed the world into the place that the Extras now reside in.