I have recently finished reading Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, a 425 page science fiction novel which has been named as “Best Book for Young Adults” in 2006 by the American Library Association. I chose this book because I was looking for a book and Mrs.Carlson recommended it to me.

 

The book is told in third person, mainly focusing around Tally Youngblood, a 15 year old who is going to become a Pretty, which is a surgery to make people look prettier in this dystopian future. Tally’s best friend, Peris, has his surgery 1 month before Tally has hers. Tally is lonely so she meets a person named Shay, who wants to leave the dystopian city to a city in the wilderness, called the smoke. Tally decides to stay, But Shay leaves. Special Circumstances (Like the city government) has been trying to track down this city for years but since Tally was left a note from Shay on how to get there, Special Circumstances decides to send Tally to find the smoke and bring the fugitives back to the city.

 

I wish that Scott Westerfeld had made the climax a little longer and would have made the climax reach more into the ending instead of having another problem near the end of the story. The ending was very abrupt but it made it so the sequel would not have as much of a rocky start as it did. The sequel was very much a continuation of this book. The climax of the book was very well  prepared for over the whole of the book. It seemed like it was going the way you would of thought it would have gone, but a small mistake made it turn a way you would have not have expected. I was struck by this passage: “I’m Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty” [Pg 425] This shows how brave and courageous she is. This is the final sentence in the novel. What she did was she sacrificed herself to save her friends. I liked this writing because the amount of suspense that this quote built up was so much that it was almost impossible to not read the rest of the 3 books in the series.

 

Overall, I give this book a 9/10 because it kept you hanging, it was very well written, and it was very sci-fi which is my favorite genre. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, regardless if they like sci-fi, because of the great writing in this masterpiece of literature.

-Lucas Farmer