So last Christmas I bought my brother UGLIES by Scott Westerfeld (which I don’t think he’s read) as a gift. I read it but never got around to getting my hands on the other books in the series. Yesterday (after a successful venture to H&M for two very cute retro swimsuits), I stopped by a bookstore to get PRETTIES and SPECIALS (as well as GRACELING by Kristin Cashore) so I might find out how this all ends. I’ll gift them to my brother when I return to New York. Hopefully he’ll get around to reading them. (He’s read all of THE HUNGER GAMES in less than a week! I have hope!).
Spoilers for the UGLIES series below.
Review of PRETTIES by Scott Westerfeld
Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
I liked the premise of UGLIES a lot and the resonance it had with the theoretical insecure adolescent within me (because I am vain and full of myself). I liked PRETTIES as well, but I was a little disappointed in the series as a follow-up to the first book. In the first novel, there seemed to me a running theme of what makes someone “pretty” or “beautiful”. Tally has been indoctrinated to think only of the science of beauty, while David, who has grown up “naturally”, sees the beauty of a determined spirit and an intelligent mind. I liked this conflict and I had hoped Westerfeld would take it to what I felt was the natural conclusion: that “being pretty” is a combination of many factors, but “inner beauty” (as cliché as it sounds) will trump “outer beauty.” This theme is still there but gets buried under a conspiracy plot.
At the end of UGLIES, Tally has agreed to undergo the pretty operation, knowing that the surgeons will place lesions on her brain to make her “pretty-minded” or “bubbleheaded” to keep her docile, shallow, and happy. She agrees to this so that she may try an experimental cure that will hopefully get rid of the lesions. When PRETTIES opens, Tally is just like any of the other new pretties; shallow, empty-headed, and caring only about what she will wear to the next bash and whether or not she’ll be voted into the Crims. The Crims are a clique, which are sort of like fraternities in New Pretty Town. On the night of a costume bash, someone from Tally’s ugly past arrives with the cure.
Where UGLIES was a thought-provoking, PRETTIES seems merely plot-inducing as well as accidentally sending a wrong message. Tally and her new boyfriend Zane both take half of the cure and begin to work on ways to get the other pretties “bubbly”; that is, alert and thinking for themselves. Ways to become bubbly include anorexia, cutting yourself, engineering brushes with death, and kissing. I doubt that this was Westerfeld’s intention; after all, adrenaline goes a long way to sharpening the senses.
Tally and Zane find ways to escape New Pretty Town with a lot of their Crims, making their way to the New Smoke where people have been living their lives naturally. Unfortunately, as soon as they get there, Special Circumstances swoops down on them again, taking Zane and recapturing Tally. And we’re back to where we were at the end of UGLIES.
Review of SPECIALS by Scott Westerfeld
Specials by Scott Westerfeld
Special Circumstances is an elite unit of status-keepers, as it were, of Tally’s city. Unlike regular pretties, their looks have been surgically changed to induce fear, resulting in vulpine eyes, high cheekbones, and pointed teeth, although still within the pretty canon (apparently). Special Circumstances, or Specials, have been a consistent antagonist throughout the books, starting with UGLIES, when Dr. Cable sends Tally into the wild to flush out the Smoke (a haven where people live naturally). Specials are usually culled from the trickiest Uglies and Pretties; that is, individuals who show signs of breaking out of the bubbleheaded mold.
In PRETTIES, Tally is approached by Dr. Cable to join the Specials, but she refuses. At the end of the book, Tally is taken away and made into one of them, betrayed by her friend Shay, just as she betrayed Shay in UGLIES. Now she and Shay are part of a special clique within the Specials called the Cutters, who cut themselves to “stay icy,” which is a state of emotional clarity, where feelings can’t touch them.
Um, this is kind of scary. Cutting yourself essentially to clear your head of emotional pain? Yikes!
Anyway, the purpose of the Cutters is to find where the New Smoke had gone and to destroy them once and for all. The New Smoke has been smuggling cures into New Pretty Town in mass quantities, which indicates they have outside city help: factories. Tally and Shay develop a plan to spring Zane from his prison, so that they may track him through the wild to where the New Smoke is operating. The New Smoke is now operating from within another city called Diego, confirming all of the Specials’ suspicions. So Dr. Cable starts a war.
War, along with violent tendencies and environmental destruction, died out with the Rusties; that is, 21st century humans. The very thought of war is horrifying to the people of Tally’s world because violence was a tendency suppressed by keeping people “pretty-minded.” Westerfeld makes some really interesting points in Specials about environmentalism and how “humankind is a cancer” but like the pretty vs. ugly debate, this message is overshadowed by plot. As a result, while the series has a cool story, it ultimately seems a bit, well, pretty-minded itself.
