Christmas has come and gone and in the grand tradition of the Jones Family, I gifted my little brother the books I want to read (ah, to be a 13 year old boy). I gave him The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. Being that my brother is more of the video game playing persuasion than the book reading persuasion, I decided to temporarily knick Uglies (which I had been meaning to read for a while) from him because I figured he wouldn’t miss it for an evening.
Review of Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
It seems odd that I’m not much for science fiction being as I love science and engineering and “what ifs.” I do have select science fiction authors I do love and I’m a huge fan of space operas like Star Wars (but not Star Trek) and Firefly, but as a whole, I don’t dig through this genre often. That being said, Uglies is highly lauded around the publishing blogosphere and the premise interested me so I willingly entered the world of science fiction.
Simply put, in the distant future, all humans undergo a cosmetic operation at the age of 16 to become Pretty. Science has broken the code defining beauty: symmetrical features, wide eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, etc. and to make everyone “equal” based on how we react to each other biologically (regarding looks). This has broken culture down into distinct groups: the pretties (Late, Middle, and New), the uglies, and the littlies.
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