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attackfishHaving recently collected on a decent sized debt, I had surplus spending money for the first time since November. The people at my local independent bookstore must have known I had money, because as soon as I had it in hand, those dastardly bookstore types started pumping a siren song straight into my pocket, a siren song that sprang from tantalizingly fluttering pages, calling "booooooks, new booooks, words, paper, crisp spines, things you've never read before, booooooooks! Buy Booooooks!" The only question then was which was stronger, the insistent clamber of undiscovered literary wonders, or the soothing whisper of old childhood friends?
I'm so predictable really. I pulled Uglies of the shelf and crept wide eyed to the counter, vowing to only buy the rest of the series if I liked this one, and not just impulsively buy the whole set because they had words in them. A few hours later, I was back, the rest of the series clutched to my chest. I also bought one of those pocket magnifier light things for riding in the car with my family after dark. The little magnifier and the car's bouncing will combine to make me horribly horribly ill, but it will be completely worth it!
Now, back to the books, before I start babbling again. Tally is an ugly, a normal looking fifteen year old girl only a few months away from the surgery that will turn her, like all other sixteen year olds, into a perfect looking "Pretty", who gets to leave the ugly dorms for New Pretty Town, one huge, beautiful, never ending party. Best of all, she gets to be with Paris, her best friend, again. But after she sneaks into an out of New Pretty Town, she becomes friends with another adventurous ugly, a girl named Shay, who has been left alone in the dorms after she chickened out of running away. Just before her sixteenth birthday, she makes her choice to run at last, away from the cookie cutter loveliness and vapid self indulgence of life as Pretty, but staying ugly is not an option. When the city government forces Tally to help them track Shay down, she learns the chilling secrets about becoming a Pretty.
While studying surgery techniques to make them safer, a pair of plastic surgeons discover that nearly everyone who has become pretty has identical brain damage. The only ones that don't are doctors, rangers, fire fighters, and the shadowy specials, the enforcers, secret police, and fighters for the city government. Slowly they realize that the brain damage is deliberate, to keep everyone stupid and pliant, and they flee the city to lead a colony of escaped uglies, and raise their son David. David, born in the wild, leads uglies on the cusp of their surgeries to the colony, called Smoke. Tally, who finds her way to smoke with only a set of cryptic clues, becoming the first person to come alone, enchants him, provoking Shay, who loves him. After Smoke is attacked and destroyed, and David's father dies, Shay is captured and made pretty. David's mother escapes with papers detailing the brain damage and a cure, which she develops, but when Shay refuses, Tally gives herself up to the city to become pretty and then take the treatment herself.
Tally and Shay, brash, uncertain, and full of tricks, always where they shouldn't be and loving it, were the sort of teenage girl characters I always want to see and usually don't. They're bright, resourceful, fond of love, but not consumed with it, and so real it hurts when they're hurt. They delight in sneaking away and admire each other for their boldness in the tricks they play. When the specials haul Tally into their bunker, her fear and realization that Shay's running away is more than just a trick, that there is something very wrong happening feel so much more important because of how carefree and thrill hungry she was before. Her seriousness about the whole thing is what makes David fall for her. He loves her for the same reason the readers do.
After she achieves her dream of being pretty, reluctantly, she falls for Zane, another trickster, and together, they fight to strip away the fog from their brain damage. She gives him half the cure when David's mother finally sends it, infuriating Shay when she learns. He begins to get terrible headaches as the cure eats him from within, and they resolve to escape. Even through the exterior shows of shallow, mellow "femininity" being pretty gives her, Tally (and Shay both) is still the same gritty, serious, defiant girl, and she loves and is loved by people just as free as she. Even after she and her fellow escapees are made into specials, she still defys. She wants to make Zane a special, and having cured herself once, she's determined to do it again. When Zane dies, and she, Shay, her friends, and David start a war between their city and a neighboring freer city, bringing down the ugly/pretty/special system, and they all stay away from the city to keep the cities in check I wanted to cheer. Westerfeld got it. A scifi thriller might end with the fall of a bad system, but the heroine didn't have to stop fighting or die. She didn't have to be happy.
Extras, the most recent book in the series, only makes this point. This book stars another lead girl, who lives in a post pretty Japan. Aya is a kicker, a journalist in a world where everyone is given a numerical rank according to how many people talk about them, and their fame determines how much they can own, she desperately wants to "kick" a big story, but when she stumbles across a group of girls who do crazy stunts while trying to keep their face rank (fame number) as low as possible, she doesn't know whether it's right to kick the story or not. When she and the girls stumble over what they think is a city killing weapons system, she has to kick it. It's her duty. suddenly, Tally, the most famous person in the world (there are cults dedicated to her) comes all the way from California to fight.
In Extras, David and Tally act like an old married couple, yet Tally refuses to be a couple with him. Shay and Tally have an uneasy friendship that they don't want to challenge by being around each other. They have changed the world together, and don't know what to do with themselves anymore. Usually, Dystopian and "dark Utopian" (Utopias that are really Dystopias) authors are so concerned with their social or political point that they forget the plot and the characters, but Westerfeld never forgets either. All four are exciting, edge of the seat reads, full of tense hoverboard chases, near death risks, and panic filled flights, and of course, Tally, Shay, Aya, David, Zane, and the rest.
Still, there were things that bothered me. I couldn't figure out where the hell food came from. Also, teachers are among the people who stay brain damaged, or "pretty minded". Speaking as a problem child, teachers need fast reflexes and fast minds to deal with normal children, and keep them interested and therefore out of trouble, much less ones with emotional, mental, or physical problems. I'm sure there are other careers necessary for keeping the city functioning that aren't mentioned. Also, (this didn't bother me so much as make me sad) but the fame economy from Extras looked like it would screw over artisans and good old fashioned cooks, preferencing two dimensional art, performance art, and writing. I'm a jeweler. I like the idea of holding the only one of something. Westerfeld mentioned a few times that there were people for whom the pretty surgery didn't work, and ended up permanently ugly and freaky (but likely with the brain damage). I want to see one. I want to write some fanfiction.
I found Westerfeld's multiple statements that pretties looked vulnerable with their big eyes and soft features (an impression underscored by their real neurologically induced vulnerability) particularly interesting given how my disability seems in some way to be attractive to certain creeps. People want to protect pretties. Hmmmm. One of the things that the pretty surgery does is boost immune system and fix any illnesses and physical problems. I might have focused on that as a child as my wish fulfillment fantasy instead of the physical beauty.
I have to wonder though, how brain damage to make people stupid and too lazy to think would reduce conflict or resource use. Conflict is rarely smart, and usually based in jealousy and competition, so while the perpetual availability of material goods might reduce conflict, the mental impairment the surgery brings would decrease innovation and more efficient use of resources. A population of stupid shallow consumers makes for a lot of waste, and a lot of conflict as people resort to fights instead of working it out. I guess if fear and anger centered parts of the brain were broken, that might do it, but then why make them stupid? either way, the people would act very oddly, more oddly than the pretties did. I also wonder how much brain damage it would take to turn an introverted bookish workaholic who hates to party into a pretty. I probably just would have ended up stupid and hiding in my room all day.
I also learned a great phrase that I shall have to use. It shouldn't be hard, I feel brain missing all the time.
I'm so predictable really. I pulled Uglies of the shelf and crept wide eyed to the counter, vowing to only buy the rest of the series if I liked this one, and not just impulsively buy the whole set because they had words in them. A few hours later, I was back, the rest of the series clutched to my chest. I also bought one of those pocket magnifier light things for riding in the car with my family after dark. The little magnifier and the car's bouncing will combine to make me horribly horribly ill, but it will be completely worth it!
Now, back to the books, before I start babbling again. Tally is an ugly, a normal looking fifteen year old girl only a few months away from the surgery that will turn her, like all other sixteen year olds, into a perfect looking "Pretty", who gets to leave the ugly dorms for New Pretty Town, one huge, beautiful, never ending party. Best of all, she gets to be with Paris, her best friend, again. But after she sneaks into an out of New Pretty Town, she becomes friends with another adventurous ugly, a girl named Shay, who has been left alone in the dorms after she chickened out of running away. Just before her sixteenth birthday, she makes her choice to run at last, away from the cookie cutter loveliness and vapid self indulgence of life as Pretty, but staying ugly is not an option. When the city government forces Tally to help them track Shay down, she learns the chilling secrets about becoming a Pretty.
While studying surgery techniques to make them safer, a pair of plastic surgeons discover that nearly everyone who has become pretty has identical brain damage. The only ones that don't are doctors, rangers, fire fighters, and the shadowy specials, the enforcers, secret police, and fighters for the city government. Slowly they realize that the brain damage is deliberate, to keep everyone stupid and pliant, and they flee the city to lead a colony of escaped uglies, and raise their son David. David, born in the wild, leads uglies on the cusp of their surgeries to the colony, called Smoke. Tally, who finds her way to smoke with only a set of cryptic clues, becoming the first person to come alone, enchants him, provoking Shay, who loves him. After Smoke is attacked and destroyed, and David's father dies, Shay is captured and made pretty. David's mother escapes with papers detailing the brain damage and a cure, which she develops, but when Shay refuses, Tally gives herself up to the city to become pretty and then take the treatment herself.
Tally and Shay, brash, uncertain, and full of tricks, always where they shouldn't be and loving it, were the sort of teenage girl characters I always want to see and usually don't. They're bright, resourceful, fond of love, but not consumed with it, and so real it hurts when they're hurt. They delight in sneaking away and admire each other for their boldness in the tricks they play. When the specials haul Tally into their bunker, her fear and realization that Shay's running away is more than just a trick, that there is something very wrong happening feel so much more important because of how carefree and thrill hungry she was before. Her seriousness about the whole thing is what makes David fall for her. He loves her for the same reason the readers do.
After she achieves her dream of being pretty, reluctantly, she falls for Zane, another trickster, and together, they fight to strip away the fog from their brain damage. She gives him half the cure when David's mother finally sends it, infuriating Shay when she learns. He begins to get terrible headaches as the cure eats him from within, and they resolve to escape. Even through the exterior shows of shallow, mellow "femininity" being pretty gives her, Tally (and Shay both) is still the same gritty, serious, defiant girl, and she loves and is loved by people just as free as she. Even after she and her fellow escapees are made into specials, she still defys. She wants to make Zane a special, and having cured herself once, she's determined to do it again. When Zane dies, and she, Shay, her friends, and David start a war between their city and a neighboring freer city, bringing down the ugly/pretty/special system, and they all stay away from the city to keep the cities in check I wanted to cheer. Westerfeld got it. A scifi thriller might end with the fall of a bad system, but the heroine didn't have to stop fighting or die. She didn't have to be happy.
Extras, the most recent book in the series, only makes this point. This book stars another lead girl, who lives in a post pretty Japan. Aya is a kicker, a journalist in a world where everyone is given a numerical rank according to how many people talk about them, and their fame determines how much they can own, she desperately wants to "kick" a big story, but when she stumbles across a group of girls who do crazy stunts while trying to keep their face rank (fame number) as low as possible, she doesn't know whether it's right to kick the story or not. When she and the girls stumble over what they think is a city killing weapons system, she has to kick it. It's her duty. suddenly, Tally, the most famous person in the world (there are cults dedicated to her) comes all the way from California to fight.
In Extras, David and Tally act like an old married couple, yet Tally refuses to be a couple with him. Shay and Tally have an uneasy friendship that they don't want to challenge by being around each other. They have changed the world together, and don't know what to do with themselves anymore. Usually, Dystopian and "dark Utopian" (Utopias that are really Dystopias) authors are so concerned with their social or political point that they forget the plot and the characters, but Westerfeld never forgets either. All four are exciting, edge of the seat reads, full of tense hoverboard chases, near death risks, and panic filled flights, and of course, Tally, Shay, Aya, David, Zane, and the rest.
Still, there were things that bothered me. I couldn't figure out where the hell food came from. Also, teachers are among the people who stay brain damaged, or "pretty minded". Speaking as a problem child, teachers need fast reflexes and fast minds to deal with normal children, and keep them interested and therefore out of trouble, much less ones with emotional, mental, or physical problems. I'm sure there are other careers necessary for keeping the city functioning that aren't mentioned. Also, (this didn't bother me so much as make me sad) but the fame economy from Extras looked like it would screw over artisans and good old fashioned cooks, preferencing two dimensional art, performance art, and writing. I'm a jeweler. I like the idea of holding the only one of something. Westerfeld mentioned a few times that there were people for whom the pretty surgery didn't work, and ended up permanently ugly and freaky (but likely with the brain damage). I want to see one. I want to write some fanfiction.
I found Westerfeld's multiple statements that pretties looked vulnerable with their big eyes and soft features (an impression underscored by their real neurologically induced vulnerability) particularly interesting given how my disability seems in some way to be attractive to certain creeps. People want to protect pretties. Hmmmm. One of the things that the pretty surgery does is boost immune system and fix any illnesses and physical problems. I might have focused on that as a child as my wish fulfillment fantasy instead of the physical beauty.
I have to wonder though, how brain damage to make people stupid and too lazy to think would reduce conflict or resource use. Conflict is rarely smart, and usually based in jealousy and competition, so while the perpetual availability of material goods might reduce conflict, the mental impairment the surgery brings would decrease innovation and more efficient use of resources. A population of stupid shallow consumers makes for a lot of waste, and a lot of conflict as people resort to fights instead of working it out. I guess if fear and anger centered parts of the brain were broken, that might do it, but then why make them stupid? either way, the people would act very oddly, more oddly than the pretties did. I also wonder how much brain damage it would take to turn an introverted bookish workaholic who hates to party into a pretty. I probably just would have ended up stupid and hiding in my room all day.
I also learned a great phrase that I shall have to use. It shouldn't be hard, I feel brain missing all the time.
