KerryAndGabe.com

I’m starting to think that I will actually complete the From the Stacks Challenge! I selected another quick read to give myself a fair chance to complete the challenge. I had read and enjoyed Westerfeld’s Midnighters trilogy and decided I wouldn’t mind giving The Uglies series a shot. I received the first one for my birthday and the second and third for Christmas yesterday. I don’t believe Uglies to be a literary masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly kept my attention and left me wanting to read the rest of the series. I would consider this series to be categorized as “science fiction light” which suits me just fine as I enjoy a quick read now and again, and I’m not sure that I’m terribly interested in heavy sci-fi.

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW

In Westerfeld’s world, everyone undergoes a series of surgeries to become “pretty” at their sixteenth birthday after spending the last four years as an ugly, separated from their parents and heavily monitored. Westerfeld’s world is essentially a flawed utopian society, and he clearly has some messages that he wishes to impart upon the reader. Today’s society’s obsession with being pretty and homogenized is taken to the extreme.

The main character, Tally, is an ugly and is just weeks away from becoming a pretty and moving to New Pretty Town where she will be able to attend parties every day and become truly happy. She can’t wait. Her best friend has already undergone the transformation, and she longs to join him. In the meantime, she meets Shay. They learn that they share the same birthday, and they quickly become friends. Shay is not as enthusiastic as Tally. They spend weeks performing practical jokes and getting into trouble as many uglies do in the last months before their surgery. Just before their birthday, Shay reveals that she is running away to a secret society called The Smoke where other uglies are creating a life and opting to forgo the surgery. Brainwashed since she was very young, Tally cannot understand why anyone would want to avoid the pretty surgery. Shay runs away without her. On her birthday, Tally believes that she is getting ready for her transformation and soon learns that she will not be allowed to have the surgery unless she betrays her friend and leads the authorities to The Smoke.

Believing that she has no choice, she sets off on an adventure to find the smoke with a cryptic note full of riddles that Shay left for her. When she finds The Smoke, things get a bit more complicated as she learns more about the secret society and their ways. She falls for David who has been raised in The Smoke and leads uglies to their camp. His parents are doctors and have inside information about the pretty surgeries, revealing that they alter both your appearance and your brain, basically causing brain damage that makes you complacent. All of this makes Tally give more thought to her original decision to betray Shay and her new friends in The Smoke. Hrm, would you rather be intelligent and ugly or dumb and pretty?

I enjoyed the book, and I look forward to reading the rest of the series. It was a very quick read, which is what I needed right now! So far, I think that The Midnighters is probably a better written series. I still like Uglies and recommend it to others who enjoy teen sci-fi or fantasy.

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Posted by kerry on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 4:40pm.
Categories: reviews.