Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.
But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever. A very action-paced book; and a truly great read.
Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.
But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever. A very action-paced book; and a truly great read.
Content warning spoiler
I remember the main thing I hated about this book is how long-winded and tedious the scenes where Tally goes through the wilderness by herself. The purposefully exotic futuristic slang can be grating at times as well. Decent concept, entertaining, not much more than that.
Uglies is about self-esteem, self-hatred, and the pursuit of beauty through a dystopian lense, balancing showing & telling to keep from infodumping. This was my first dystopia as a kid, & I’m pleased that it holds up as well as I remember.‬
Tally is an unreliable narrator in a really good way. She doesn’t really lie to the reader, but her narration is so wholly shaped by her worldview that her thought process informs the reader about the world in a really neat way. She’s not infallible, so when her assumptions about her world are wrong it affects what she lets the reader know.
Most of what I love in this series is set up here but pays off later, so to keep it spoiler free: read this series, read this book. I do need to give the cw that there are serious discussions of body image and negative ideation …
Too generic and banal.
Solid young adult fiction.
Most reviewers refer to the Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder," but it's really far more similar to "Number 12 Looks Just Like You." That's a plus rather than a minus; it's thematically similar but updated and expanded.
Most reviewers refer to the Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder," but it's really far more similar to "Number 12 Looks Just Like You." That's a plus rather than a minus; it's thematically similar but updated and expanded.
The end made me curious... how will it go on?
Nevertheless I didn't like the book. It would make a good movie or TV series but it's just too boring for a book.
Full review to come.
The end made me curious... how will it go on?
Nevertheless I didn't like the book. It would make a good movie or TV series but it's just too boring for a book.
Full review to come.
Scott Westerfeld's Uglies was one of those books I'd been hearing about for ages, and I'll cheerily admit that glancing at the blurbs on it and the other books in the series in a bookstore did pique my interest. I did not, however, get a chance to read this one until it was handed out briefly for free in PDF form as part of a promotion for Westerfeld's book Leviathan.
Survey says: less complex than I would have liked, which so far I find is the risk I run when I delve into YA. On the surface, there's decent worldbuilding here in a sort of Logan's Run-like, futuristic setting where every member of society is given an operation at age 16 to turn them into a "pretty". Tally, about to turn 16, is ardently looking forward to her turn, since the transition means she'll have no responsibilities for …
Scott Westerfeld's Uglies was one of those books I'd been hearing about for ages, and I'll cheerily admit that glancing at the blurbs on it and the other books in the series in a bookstore did pique my interest. I did not, however, get a chance to read this one until it was handed out briefly for free in PDF form as part of a promotion for Westerfeld's book Leviathan.
Survey says: less complex than I would have liked, which so far I find is the risk I run when I delve into YA. On the surface, there's decent worldbuilding here in a sort of Logan's Run-like, futuristic setting where every member of society is given an operation at age 16 to turn them into a "pretty". Tally, about to turn 16, is ardently looking forward to her turn, since the transition means she'll have no responsibilities for a while and will get to indulge in non-stop parties and fun.
This being a dystopian setting, though, she naturally finds out that not everybody is as enthused about becoming pretty as they should be. When her best friend escapes the city in search of a hidden enclave of people led by a couple of doctors who have discovered disturbing truths about the operation, Tally is forced to go after her and infiltrate the enclave as a spy.
All of which is a tasty little core of a story, to be sure. That said, I frequently found the worldbuilding thinner than I would have liked even as I appreciated the base concepts. Same deal with the characterizations of most of the cast. Tally read for me as too simplistic, and I couldn't really nail down whether this was because it was a YA novel and therefore less complex than I prefer, or simply because Tally as a teenaged girl was being portrayed believably as a teenaged girl. Her primary motivation is at first of course to be a pretty--which seems reasonable for all the young people in her society, since that's what they have drummed into their heads. But even afterward, as she starts cluing in to what's going on, she is wishy-washy about committing to changing things, and half the time only seems interested in doing so because she's attracted to the son of the doctors who run their little colony.
Overall though I did like the read, and I'll probably be buying this sooner or later to get a proper copy, as well as continuing the series to see what happens next. There is a cliffhanger, and it got me well enough that yeah, I'm in for more. Three stars.
