library_mama | Uglies (Reply)

Uglies by Scott Westerfield. Narrated by Carine Montbertrand. If you pay any attention to teen books, you’ll have heard of this one – it’s been on the bestseller lists and on prominent display in the bookstores for the past couple of years. A few hundred years in our future, cities are small and self-sufficient, powered by renewable energy. In one such city, fifteen-year-old Tally Youngblood is waiting impatiently to turn sixteen. Then she will undergo cosmetic surgery to become a Pretty and move to New Pretty Town, where the parties last all night long. With just a few days to go, her new-this-summer best friend, Shay, tells Tally that she wants to keep her own face. She wants Tally to run away with her to the Smoke, a tiny settlement of people who have rejected the city. Tally says no – until Special Circumstances tells her she’ll stay Ugly until she brings Shay back. Can a girl who’s relied on a computerized city to tell her where to go her whole life survive traveling through the wilderness alone? And, if she can find the settlement, will she believe what’s she’s been told her whole life about the Operation, or will she listen to the tales of the dark secrets of the city that the founders of the Smoke tell her?

There might not be enough detail of the future world to satisfy a hard-core science fiction geek, but focusing on the people makes for a sci-fi read that’s easy for just about anybody to get into, while the fast-paced action won’t let you go. There’s even a fair amount of depth to the story, which ponders the importance (or not) of physical beauty and the price of peace. Carine Montbertrand did an excellent job with the narration, creating believable teen protagonists as well as a host of other characters, all with good, distinct voices. This kind of book seems to me to work best either on paper or for longer trips – with my short commute to work, it was just frustrating to have to wait so long to find out what happened next. And the story ends quite abruptly, to be taken up in the next two books.