Uglies by Scott Westerfield
Tally Youngblood lives in a world where at 16, you have an operation to make you pretty. Until then you are considered an “Ugly”. But Tally’s new friend, Shay, isn’t so sure about the whole thing. Just before their shared birthday Shay tries to convince Tally to run away with her to the Smoke, a camp where several other uglies have gone to escape turning pretty. Tally refuses and Shay leaves but on Tally’s birthday instead of being taken to the hospital she’s taken to Special Circumstances and told that she either has to find Shay and bring her back or she’ll be ugly for the rest of her life.
It took a bit for me to get into this book and to get over the whole premise. At first the whole idea of doing surgery to make everybody pretty at a certain age seemed really unrealistic to me but as the book progressed and more information about how it all came about was revealed it became a little more believable.
As far as dystopian novels go, this one was ok. The plot was definitely intriguing and entertaining but somehow it just wasn’t believable in some sense. And it wasn’t that I had a problem with the entire premise but something about the details just struck me as a little off somehow. For example, the whole reason our society died out was because they was some virus that infected gasoline products and caused them to spontaneously combust. That seemed just a little too far-fetched for me and there were other details like that that just didn’t jive.
Other than that I did really enjoy the book. It was well written, the characters were believable and well developed and as I mentioned before the story was interesting. Previously, I said that the one was only ok but I think that may do the novel a disservice. The problem is that when compared with books like The Hnuger Games, there really is no comparison. Or even comparing to some of Westerfield’s other (non-dystopian) novels, like Leviathan and Behemoth, Uglies (and Pretties, which I am almost finished reading) is just not the same quality. I’m not even sure I’m going to read the remaining books in this series.
That being said, I know these books have been reviewed extensively in the book blogging world and that many people have loved them. Here are some more favourable reviews:
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I often wonder if I would have felt the same about this book if I’d read it along with the current raft of dystopias. I have still never managed to carry on to the next in the series but I did like this one.
I wanted to read this – heard good things about it, and the premise is interesting. However, it just sounded slightly commercial, which put me off. The examples you give (e.g. the way the apocalypse happened) kind-of backs up my theory….
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A friend of mine recommended this as well, but I’ve put it off. (I can only read a few dystopian books per year, else I get too down). Your thoughts echo exactly my predictions about how I’d feel about the book.
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