Uglies (Uglies Trilogy, Book 1)

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Playing on every teens passionate desire to look as good as everybody else, Scott Westerfeld (Midnighters) projects a future world in which a compulsory operation at sixteen wipes out physical differences and makes everyone pretty by conforming to an ideal standard of beauty. The "New Pretties" are then free to play and party, while the younger "Uglies" look on enviously and spend the time before their own transformations in plotting mischievous tricks against their elders. Tally Youngblood is one of the most daring of the Uglies, and her imaginative tricks have gotten her in trouble with the menacing department of Special Circumstances. She has yearned to be pretty, but since her best friend Shay ran away to the rumored rebel settlement of recalcitrant Uglies called The Smoke, Tally has been troubled. The authorities give her an impossible choice: either she follows Shays cryptic directions to The Smoke with the purpose of betraying the rebels, or she will never be allowed to become pretty. Hoping to rescue Shay, Tally sets off on the dangerous journey as a spy. But after finally reaching The Smoke she has a change of heart when her new lover David reveals to her the sinister secret behind becoming pretty. The fast-moving story is enlivened by many action sequences in the style of videogames, using intriguing inventions like hoverboards that use the riders skateboard skills to skim through the air, and bungee jackets that make wild downward plunges survivable -- and fun. Behind all the commotion is the disturbing vision of our own society -- the Rusties -- visible only in rusting ruins after a virus destroyed all petroleum. Teens will be entranced, and the cliffhanger ending will leave them gasping for the sequel. (Ages 12 and up) --Patty Campbell

Product Description
Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that?

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

Customer Reviews: Read 276 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Can't wait to read the next one... December 14, 2005
54 out of 59 found this review helpful

I have not read other novels by the author, but I will be after reading this one. This was an incredibly well written book. The setting was well created and the characters were believable and well developed. There are no great leaps of faith that one has to make with some science fiction attempts. The story line makes sense. You're wondering how could this all work, and just about when you get to the point were you have to have some type of explanation or you're going to get frustrated, the author gives it to you. And I liked the explanations and the logic behind how the world got to this point.

Uglies reminds of The Giver, in that the people feel as though they are in a utopia, and the reader thinks this is great to start out with, and then it all starts falling a part at the seams once you begin really thinking about the plot. I like this book because it raises some of the same questions; how much control should we give the people in power, should you question the world around you, what's with all the rules, conformity, but it does it with the whole idea of receiving cosmetic surgery and hoverboards. The science and technology added to this story make it easier to swallow then The Giver.

5 out of 5 stars

Couldn't Put it Down September 1, 2007
30 out of 33 found this review helpful

I am a middle school English teacher and enjoy reading Young Adult literature. I also have seen the Twilight Zone episode, with a very similar story line, and it was an episode that has lingered hauntingly in my thoughts....so when I heard of this series, I was very eager to read it. I don't frequently write reviews, but I had to react to the negative reviews that I saw on this site. Though the story line may not be original, the author writes beautifully, using specific vocabulary and beautiful similes, without, at least in my opinion, holding back the story line. Tally is a well-developed character, thoughtful and fully understanding the consequences of her actions. I saved this book for a three-day weekend but read it all last night and this morning. I was unable to put it down and am planning to read all three books this week. I highly recommend this book for readers who enjoy thinking about what our future will be like. I plan to share the first chapter with my Junior Great Books class. I think it will be great fodder for intellectual discussion.

5 out of 5 stars

Uglies, anything but August 29, 2006
24 out of 27 found this review helpful

I bought this book on the recommendations I found online and I'm really glad I did. The synopsis has already been well described here. I just want to add my "thumbs WAAAY up" to all the other glowing reviews. As I read this book, I kept thinking of how the concept of beauty changes so much over time. I wonder what will be considered beautiful in 300 years (about the time this series is set). I was also wondering who got to decide what was beautiful when the operations started, and had it evolved over time. Interesting things to ponder as you read...but making you think is what really good fiction should do.

5 out of 5 stars

Great Book November 4, 2005
14 out of 27 found this review helpful

I bought this book because I had purchased the authors previous novels, both being in the "Midnighters" trilogy and enjoying them both very much. This was an amazing novel, you start off thinking that society has finally gotten its stuff together and created harmony. At the age of 16 you are given an operation that turns you from an "ugly" to a "pretty" and all the uglies want to to be one of the pretties.

Makes sense, I would hate having to be called "ugly" for my life. Then everything fall around the greatness of being a pretty. Tally the main character of the book runs into a person who becomes here best fried. Shay want to never have the pretty operation and runs a way to this place where everyone is ugly and lives like they did in the old times, which the people of that time are called "Rusties" as all the stuff they created has turned to rust or rubble.

Shay does run away to the "Smoke" and Tally is upset that she did not go along with her(a little), but then she is forced to go to the Smoke because of the other breed of people thata round besides the Pretties and Uglies, they are the "Specials" or Special Circumstances and they want to destroy the smoke and all places similar to it. Tally complies, because they say they will make her stay ugly forever, which is the most devastating thing possible in her mind, so she goes to spy and reveal the location of the Smoke.

Then she learns to love it, but eventually she does some tings which bring down the Smoke and lead her to becoming a pretty only as a chance to help the problem with a Pretties mind, which is VERY severe. Which leads directly into the second book "Pretties".

5 out of 5 stars

Absolutely Amazing!!!! March 6, 2005
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Uglies is a wonderful book. Its about a girl named Tally, and she lives in a futristic society. In this society on your 16th birthday everyone has a surgery that turns you supermodel gorgeous. Everyone else who hasn't turned 16 is ugly. Uglies live in seperate cities and count the days untill they can be pretty, well... almost everyone does. Tally's new friend Shay doesn't want to be pretty and generic, so she runs away to join other who don't want to be pretty. The "specials" know Shay has run away, and that she isn't the only one. The Specials know they run away to a place called Smoke only they don't know where it is. They offer Tally a choice, help them find Smoke, and betray her friend, or never become pretty, ever. Tally wants to be pretty, how can anyone not want to be a "pretty"? You get to party all the time with no responsibilties. When Tally goes in search of Shay, she finds a whole new side to her world, and find out something improtant that the "specials" have been trying to keep secret. When you have the opperation to become beautiful, they don't just change your looks.

This book is wonderful! It really makes you think about the cost of beauty. Uglies reminds me of the The Giver. It is really good. It makes you think about how a society can brainwash you into thinking that your not good enough. Uglies has action, adveture, its science fiction so if you like that genre you've got your technology fix, but if you aren't really intereseted in that genre it doesn't matter because the book has a much deeper meaning. Also girls, their is a little bit of romance spliced in. Check it out, you'll love it!

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