This book is the 2nd out of 4 in the "Uglies Trilogy" and yes I know I wrote "4" and then "trilogy" and this is because the original setup was a trilogy and then the author decided that he could milk some more money out of this thing and wrote another one that not many people actually read.
If you read Uglies you already know that the other sort of people called "Pretties" are constantly referenced in the book and they are not initially seen as enemies, they are just the more privileged portion of society and every member of society is entitled to join them and become beautiful and carefree once they hit the ripe age of 16.
This is a sci-fi dystopian series set at some point in the not too distant future where mankind has already fallen and this is the "new order" of things. People are physically altered at the age of 16 to be unobtainably perfect on their 16th birthday at which point they are taken to "Pretty Island" where they live lives of opulance and are separated from the rest of society. They do not age quickly, they have flawless skin, they have perfect teeth, they have perfect height and body proportions, and they have an easy life that is just filled with partying and even electronic walls that will provide them with almost anything they ask for just by saying the words. There are parties every day and fireworks constantly fill the sky in a never-ending party. No one is ever sick and nobody is capable of getting injured for the most part since a risk-free society has been designed for them.
Sounds pretty great right? Well, all is not what it seems as it is discovered by "Tally", who was the main character in Uglies as well as the other book, that this society isn't actually meant to be for the benefit of the people in it. In that regard the entire series is kind of a reflection of government that exists now and how many have the opinion of government existing only to placate the plebeians into believing that the government has their best interests at heart while in the meantime this is all just a type of societal control.
Tally was a reluctant addition to the Pretties society and was added at the end of Uglies where the society that her and others had built outside of the confines of government control was raided and destroyed and she was taken captive. She successfully convinced the overlords that she was on their side all along and therefore would like to take her rightful place in their ranks - and of course the overlords give her the wish because the story cannot progress if they do not do so.
A movie version of Uglies was made and it was probably the intention that this would become the next big thing but the movie performed very badly and the next 2 films were never made because I guess the studios didn't relish the idea of losing tens of millions of dollars more on making another one. I DL'd the film and was only able to make it through about 20 minutes of it. It's really bad.
Now let me get into the good and bad of Pretties.
This is one of the best aspects of this book. The chapters are broken down into very manageable length and the story isn't very complicated so it is very easy to follow. I was able to just scan a lot of paragraphs rather than read all of them because Scott Westerfeld writes in a very predictable fashion where only the dialogue in the beginning and ending of each paragraph is actually important towards the story at all. The rest is a normally some flowery description of the surroundings or emotions that are not so essential if you like to speed-read.
This is good because I never really felt like the story was losing me. It gets straight to the point and the plot flows really well. There are no unnecessary side-characters and the ones we do get to meet are for the most part, interesting
It may have been for the sake of being able to sell 3 books instead of one, but each of the books is between 3 and 4-hundred pages. This is something I find very manageable and not like I am about to undertake some sort of "Gone with the Wind" epic undertaking.
Even when the story starts to be a bit ho-hum it doesn't take very long before it gets moving again. I don't feel like there is much in the way of unnecessary information in any of the story for the sake of simply making it longer
This can be seen as a good or a bad thing depending on your outlook and more importantly, your age.
The story has teenagers in the forefront and the people who are their minders or overlords are all adults who seem to just be completely incompetent. This kind of ruined the overall story for me because you have to continually ask yourself how it would be possible for this complicated society could possibly have been formed in the first place if a few kids are able to cause so much trouble in what appears to be a rather effortless manor.
If you are an anxiety-ridden teenager with a rebellious streak, you will probably be cheering the entire way through, but for me, and adult, I tend to look at the story from a logical standpoint and this is where it can be a bit frustrating as we see our heroine succeed with her hair-brained ideas time and time again.
These books were clearly written with a saga being created in mind. They read like a film and each is self-contained in the individual titles. I have no doubt that the next volume, Specials, is going to be the same way.
We are following a path in this story that plays out like a movie that isn't overly concerned with plausibility and it is evident that Scott Westerfeld isn't either. It seems as though he had a broad idea or formula, and he forces the end result by a series of steps in between almost like he had a 1 page storyboard and then made it happen in order to make a near 400-page book. While the characters are a bit older than the first book and a few of them are no longer there, the story is essentially exactly the same as the first book.
I do not have access to most physical versions of any book, let alone something as obscure as this one. So I loaded it up on my trusty second-generation Kindle and Nadi (my dog) is just as terrified of it as she is of anything else I try to lean on her.
Say what you will about the planned obsolescence of today's electronics: This is not the case with my more than 20 year old Kindle. That thing has been through the ringer and is still going strong.
Pretties is a book that isn't going to appeal to everyone but I was able to blaze through it in just a couple of days because even though it isn't tremendous writing and certainly isn't anything momentous, new, or unique, it is easy to consume. If you like dystopian tales with easy-to-understand storylines that come and you quickly and get the job done, Pretties actually does a pretty good job.
If you read the first book you will see from a long ways off how this one is going to end, with a few twists built in. For the most part it is a wildly unrealistic story but it is still a dystopian story, and those are my favorite kind of stories and perhaps that is why I stuck it through. Well, that and the fact that I currently have 4 broken bones in my body and I don't have a wide variety of activities that are available to me at the moment.
If you can get it for free or borrow it from a library then I would recommend it. I wouldn't spend any money on it though and there is no reason to add it to your permanent library unless you are 14 years old.
Overall I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.
