Uglies: Uglies, Book 1

It's so hard to find books that appeal to my interests - books with a great plot, characterization, and my personal preference - some good fantastical elements. I absolutely love this series. Fascinating setting and concept; it makes you think deeper into some of our societal flaws. It really highlights the crazy flawed thinking into externals that so many of us have. I loved that while there were many elements that clearly are fantasy, the characters didn't escape challenging situations in unrealistic ways, by somehow sprouting wings or the like. There were clear cut "rules" that the book laid out and there was no crazy magic somehow occurring to save the protagonists.

My daughter had to read this for summer reading this year and she absolutely loved it thinking of getting her the rest in the series

Uglies is yet another one of those series I started without any idea of the plot (I have got to stop doing that. It's really going to backfire on me someday). All I knew was that it's yet another YA dystopian. I know, I know, the genre is flooded with mediocrity right now, but before you immediately tune out, let me just throw this out there: this one is actually good.PLOT:Uglies follows Tally Youngblood, a 15-year-old girl living in a futuristic society that has decided that the main thing wrong with the world is that attractive people have unfair advantages over the unattractive. The solution? Everyone undergoes cosmetic surgery on their 16th birthday, modifying all their facial and physical features to fit a common standard of perfect beauty.Once the procedure is complete, these former "Uglies" are now allowed to live in beautiful cities with the "Pretties," where their every need is catered to via a hole in the wall (think replicators on Star Trek: TNG), and their only concern is what to wear to the next fabulous party.Tally is eagerly awaiting her operation, passing her time with harmless pranks on the Pretties, until she meets Shay. Shay is also 15, and therefore also an Ugly. As a matter of fact, she and Tally share the same birthday, which means they will have their procedures at the same time.The difference is that Shay doesn't want the procedure. And after unsuccessfully trying to convince Tally to run away with her, Shay disappears. All she leaves behind is a set of cryptic instructions, in case Tally wants to join her.While Tally is concerned for Shay, she doesn't fluctuate in her desire to become a Pretty. She hopes Shay got what she wanted. But soon, Tally will get what she wants too.However, on the day of Tally's procedure, she is presented with an awful choice: go find Shay, and the rebels she has run away with, or stay Ugly forever.Thus begins Tally's journey to the Smoke, the secret rebel hideout that Shay has fled to. All Tally wants is to put this all behind her and become Pretty. Until she finds the Smoke, and starts to question everything she ever believed.MY THOUGHTS:I'll admit, I was a little wary about starting a series that revolves around being pretty. I mean seriously, how much more superficial can you get? I was prepared to be super-annoyed with the shallowness of it all.But once I started reading, I found myself completely absorbed in Tally's world. Mr. Westerfeld actually made me understand how Tally would want nothing more in life than to become Pretty, and managed to do it without making me hate her. No small task.There were a few things I could nitpick about the plot. The endless hoverboarding, for example, made me think someone bet Mr. Westerfeld that he couldn't write an entire book based off of the chase scene in Back to the Future II.Also, I had a little bit of a hard time figuring out how anything actually got accomplished in this world. What I surmised was that the inhabitants of Uglyville go to school, then turn 16 and party hearty for a few years until they hit "Middle Pretty" age and actually start contributing something to society. Not that I could imagine any of them actually wanting to contribute, since it sounds like the Pretty lifestyle was the epitome of luxury and indulgence. Maybe you or I would get tired of living like that, but the Pretties don't seem to mind in the least.Is a workforce consisting entirely of middle-aged ex-partiers (as it's implied that the elderly, or "Crumblies" -- ouch -- also do not work) enough to keep this advanced society running smoothly? Maybe not in the world you and I live in. In the world of Uglies, though, it works.When it comes to YA fiction -- or any fiction, for that matter -- I can almost always poke holes in the logic of the world as it's written. The question I have to ask myself is, "Did I care?" If the answer is yes, it pulls me out of the story and diminishes my enjoyment of the book.With Uglies, the answer was no. I didn't care that not everything made sense. What I cared about was Tally. Was she a perfect character? Heck no. She drove me nuts at times (this is also one of the main downfalls of reading YA lit, period. The protagonists are always teenagers. I am not). But she was fun to read about, her journey was exciting, and I couldn't put the book down until I knew what happened to her.

Mr. Westerfeld has established a very good reputation as a writer of imaginative and engrossing YA science fiction, and this book is a prime example of how he has earned that reputation.The palette for this book is a society that has declared that everyone must be pretty, and achieves that goal through a set of medical operations at age sixteen, so that no one will end up with the misfortune of having less than stellar looks, thereby eliminating many of the conflicts associated with people who look `different'. Those in the `tween' years of 12 to 15 are, of course, comparatively ugly, and are typically known by that moniker, as opposed to the `littles', the `middle pretties' - those in middle age, and the `crumblies' - still pretty, but old. Pretties get to party all night and all day, with practically whatever they want delivered on demand through the convenient service outlet in their rooms. The uglies, of course feeling somewhat left out, often try to trick their minding sensors and crash the pretty parties, with some more successful than others.Tally Youngblood is one such ugly, an inventive, bright fifteen year old, only a few weeks away from her pretty operation. Her `tricks' to enter the pretty society across the river and her friendship with another ugly, Shay, eventually lead to her being noticed and unwillingly being recruited by the Specials, a shadowy group that seems to actually be in control of this society, to help find and destroy a small group of renegades from this utopia who live in the wilds. Her travels in pursuit of this goal eventually lead her far from the city and just as far from the mental viewpoint it encapsulates.Tally is well drawn as a young girl with perfectly understandable goals and emotions. The problems she faces have immediate and forceful impact on not just her worldview, but on the reader's. The challenges are not small molehills of little larger relevance, but in fact have great import in her development while at the same time allowing the reader to see and think about the problems of such a society and what the alternatives to it are. All of this is done without any preaching or overt philosophizing, in very clear prose.I did have a few reservations about just how the economy of this society actually worked, as only hints were given about just what the middle pretties did, how things were manufactured, or just what technology was really behind some of the gadgets. But these were pretty small quibbles compared to the presentation of Tally's character and those around her, both those sympathetic to her and those wishing to control her.This is only the first book of this trilogy (actually now four books), so the end of this book leaves a lot of threads hanging, but it does manage to conclude the initial scenario quite well, and shows us a Tally who is a far cry from the Tally at the beginning of the book. It perhaps is not a great sf book, but it's a whole lot better than some of the `adult' material being published today, as it is quite accessible by people who don't have Ph. D. in rocket science, while still being both quite inventive and with quite a bit of meat hiding behind it's story of one girl's growth.---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Me parece un buen inicio, sin duda me atrapo y no dudo que continuare con los siguientes libros. Es bastante ligero y dinámico.El libro llego un poquito sucio de la portada pero nada problemático.

Amazing series and amazing world. Absolutely a MUST READ for any dystopian fiction lover. The Smoke Lives! ☆ ☆ ☆

Esse livro é um daqueles que a gente não quer parar de ler; muita aventura e reflexão sobre padrões sociais!

Some pages of the book were torn and folded. It didn't come in an exactly perfect manner. But otherwise it was fine...

In a society were everyone is pretty, isn't everyone ugly?In this book you explore our image-driven society and explore concepts like beauty