Specials

The follow on to  Uglies  and Pretties , set in the long ahead future when teenagers at 16 are changed from ‘uglies’ through the wonders of plastic surgery which alters not only their appearance but makes them empty-headed ‘pretties’. Like the very best of dystopian visions, this is all too recognisably a version of where we might be headed. These teenagers enjoy freedoms at the price of succumbing to the imprisoning versions of how they look and the elite are rewarded by positions as ‘Specials’ where they cut themselves to generate the pain of heightened awareness and the hatred which feeds their controlling of the others. (The image of the old-style razor blade with blood on one of its blades makes a stark cover although anachronistically old-fashioned even for us.) Here again, the action is page-turningly, breathlessly fast from the opening as the Specials go on a hoverboard chase (one of several). Westerfeld’s hyperactive storytelling, his sense of the science-fantastic technology liberating the coolness of human movement, his ear for the dialogue of the young and his sense of the tensions of their lives are all sure-footed. Tally has moved through each of the three phases to become one of the ‘special ones’ driven by her perfection and hatreds. The rebels of the New Smoke are the enemies to be hunted but also, she finds, contain some of the people she has loved. Perfection has its extreme rewards in the technically wonderfully reconstruction of the human body, the pleasures and pains of which are strikingly registered by Tally during the course of her extreme actions through air, land and water as part of the metaphorical journey she continues to make. This is a very satisfying extension to the sequence.