Everything has a label, but everything is explained. There’s a lot of jargon, like ‘mag-lev’ and ‘bubblehead’ and different branches of Pretties and Specials like ‘Crims’ and ‘Cutters’. You can tell when reading the series that Scott Westerfeld put a lot of work into the world. Tally resents them, but if you can’t beat them, join them, right? If I was to retitle these books they’d be called ‘Innocence’, ‘Experience’ and ‘Everything’s My Fault’. Specials are cruel Pretties, kind of like law enforcers but with a lot of tattoos. She doesn’t seem to respect other character’s decisions.Īs the books are called ‘Uglies’, ‘Pretties’ and ‘Specials’, it’s fairly easy to guess what happens to Tally in each one. She was dependent on others at the beginning, but then became someone so extracted for the Ugly fifteen year old she was in the first book by the third book that I couldn’t connect to her perspective. Throughout the series, I didn’t like Tally’s personality. It was weird for characters to criticise how we live now!) They live off the land, with no uber-technology used for elaborate pranks.

Tally and Shay discover a city that doesn’t subscribe to the government’s ideals. Is being Pretty really all that matters? Is being Ugly really that bad? What does it mean to be ugly? The series follows the two girls as they try and face what their government is doing to its people. Tally, the protagonist, just wants to be pretty. It was interesting to read a book that discussed beauty and how its presented in a way that didn’t seem glaringly obvious. When you pick up this book, you’re not bombarded with a social agenda to redefine beauty.

When they turn sixteen, they become pretty, through surgery and genetic implants. The concept of this series is all people are born ugly. The idea that there were dystopian books before ‘The Hunger Games’ rose to popularity seems to astound people. A sticker on the Uglies series reads, ‘Before the Hunger Games there was….’ This is one of my pet peeves, which probably deserves a post by itself.

Uglies and pretties book