Book Review: Uglies, Pretties, Specials
Jun. 1st, 2008 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerReading: Sense and Sensibility. Willoughby IS a cad. I knew it!
Reading for school: Eichmann in Jerusalem. About which I will write something longer later, when I have my thoughts in order.
Book review site: Refracted Light. I don’t always agree with the moral part of their reviews (they have a very Catholic point of view) but it’s a relief to find reviews that go head-to-head with the fact that mind-control powers are inherently morally problematic.
Book Review: Uglies, Pretties, Specials
Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series (Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras, though I haven’t read the last) has been getting a lot of attention lately. YA! The future of SF!
It could be a worse future.
They’re nice books. The prose is neither distinctive nor exquisite, but it’s serviceable. The worldbuilding is clear, consistent, and well-considered, although not deep or intricate. The characters are far better than cardboard cut-outs, but not quite three-dimensional. The books grapple with issues—not deeply, but they do, and young teenagers would probably find the discussion thought provoking.
In short, they’re mediocre. They were a pleasant way to spend a few afternoons, but I’m not going to reread.
The plot in a nutshell: Tally lives in a semi-dystopian future society where, upon turning sixteen, everyone gets an operation that makes them freakishly pretty and totally air headed. After some rigmarole, Tally runs away and meets up with a society of anti-pretty operation people, and there’s teaming up and betrayal and fighting evil forces. Tally becomes a superhero.
The super-hero part is well-handled until the end of Specials, which is utterly ridiculous. I am totally going to spoil so I can give in the mocking it deserves.
Basically, Tally and her boyfriend are going to hide in the wild and watch over the new, expanding cities, and if the cities get to greedy they will descend like Captain Planet and stop the ecological devastation.
Leaving aside the fact that even super!Tally can’t police the entire world, what the heck was Westerfeld thinking? He’s spent the last three books showing how terrible it is to give absolute power to anyone because they’ll misuse it, and his solution to the fact that free people might cause an ecological crisis is to hand Tally absolute power? The girl isn’t psychologically stable enough to run a student council, let alone a superhero bureau!
And don’t tell me her boyfriend is going to keep her in check. If he pushes her too hard Tally can probably kill him with a twitch of her super-charged finger, or at any rate leave him behind and never listen to him again.
Reading for school: Eichmann in Jerusalem. About which I will write something longer later, when I have my thoughts in order.
Book review site: Refracted Light. I don’t always agree with the moral part of their reviews (they have a very Catholic point of view) but it’s a relief to find reviews that go head-to-head with the fact that mind-control powers are inherently morally problematic.
Book Review: Uglies, Pretties, Specials
Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series (Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras, though I haven’t read the last) has been getting a lot of attention lately. YA! The future of SF!
It could be a worse future.
They’re nice books. The prose is neither distinctive nor exquisite, but it’s serviceable. The worldbuilding is clear, consistent, and well-considered, although not deep or intricate. The characters are far better than cardboard cut-outs, but not quite three-dimensional. The books grapple with issues—not deeply, but they do, and young teenagers would probably find the discussion thought provoking.
In short, they’re mediocre. They were a pleasant way to spend a few afternoons, but I’m not going to reread.
The plot in a nutshell: Tally lives in a semi-dystopian future society where, upon turning sixteen, everyone gets an operation that makes them freakishly pretty and totally air headed. After some rigmarole, Tally runs away and meets up with a society of anti-pretty operation people, and there’s teaming up and betrayal and fighting evil forces. Tally becomes a superhero.
The super-hero part is well-handled until the end of Specials, which is utterly ridiculous. I am totally going to spoil so I can give in the mocking it deserves.
Basically, Tally and her boyfriend are going to hide in the wild and watch over the new, expanding cities, and if the cities get to greedy they will descend like Captain Planet and stop the ecological devastation.
Leaving aside the fact that even super!Tally can’t police the entire world, what the heck was Westerfeld thinking? He’s spent the last three books showing how terrible it is to give absolute power to anyone because they’ll misuse it, and his solution to the fact that free people might cause an ecological crisis is to hand Tally absolute power? The girl isn’t psychologically stable enough to run a student council, let alone a superhero bureau!
And don’t tell me her boyfriend is going to keep her in check. If he pushes her too hard Tally can probably kill him with a twitch of her super-charged finger, or at any rate leave him behind and never listen to him again.
