What do You think about Extras (2007)?
Finishing a series always makes me feel like I'm losing a friend. I've spent a good week or so reading these four books, absorbed in the pages and the characters and their lives, and now I just feel lonely. Extras is set a few years after the huge finale of Specials, or the "mind-rain" as they now call it. It's also a bunch of new characters (although Tally, Shay, David and Fausto make a reappearance which I'm extremely happy about!), a new city, and a spanking new economy known as the "reputation economy". Japan is all about face rank now, a little like a city-sized YouTube, with everyone sporting a hovercam and a feed to broadcast whatever they think will boost their rank. The higher your rank, the more you're able to live in luxury. Fifteen-year-old Aya is ranked around 400,000, making her a total extra, however she uncovers a secret clique, the Sly Girls, which she is certain will bump her to the top. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as that...Needless to say, although I enjoyed it immensely, Extras isn't as wonderful as its predecessors. Perhaps because we've grown so accustomed to Tally and her friends, that a new narrator instantly puts me a little on edge. Aya irritates me more than Tally ever did because all she ever cares about is being famous. I adore Frizz (Aya's love interest) though. Some of the funniest, literally laugh-out-loud moments contained him and Tally when they find out about his brain surge, Radical Honesty, which compells him to tell the truth. He almost surpassed my love for Zane, and is probably the reason this book received four stars. (Speaking of Zane, though... I WISH they'd have said his name. They always trailed off; it was so depressing. I think that was Westerfeld's aim though, so kudos. But still... sigh, Zane <3)A great ending, but like I first said... now I just feel empty D:
—Christina
Extras is the fourth book in Scott Westerfeld's critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling series (originally it was a trilogy). The first three books Uglies, Pretties, and Specials follow Tally Youngblood, a fifteen-year-old girl living in a futuristic world so dominated by plastic surgery that anyone who looks normal is ugly. Extras is set three years after the events of the trilogy unfold, in a different city, with different main characters. The trilogy, however, sets the framework for everything that happens in Extras so while the book is great on its own it definitely assumes you know the story of the trilogy.In this new world, where everything is changing, being pretty isn't enough to get by. Now it's fame that matters. The more famous you are, the higher your face rank is. A higher rank means more currency in a world where celebrity is everything.Everyone is trying to get more attention somehow: "tech-heads" are obsessed with gadgets, "surge monkeys" are hooked on the newest trends in plastic surgery, and "kickers" use feeds (think blogs but techier and cooler because it's a Westerfeld idea) to spread the word on all the gossip and trends worth mentioning. But staying famous is a lot easier than getting famous. Just ask Aya Fuse. Fifteen-year-old Aya has had her own feed for a year, but her rank is still 451,369--so low that she's a definite nobody, someone her city calls an extra.Aya has a plan to up her rank though. All she needs is a really big story to kick. Aya finds the perfect story when she meets the Sly Girls, a clique pulling crazy tricks in utter obscurity. As Aya follows her story she realizes it's much bigger than one clique: maybe the biggest story since Tally Youngblood changed everything.Some sequels that bring in all new characters are annoying. Not this one. All of the "new" characters are original and, equally important, likable. The story is also utterly original covering very different territory than the rest of the series. It doesn't pick up right where the trilogy left off, but a lot of questions are answered by the end of this book.Like the other books in the series, this one moves fast. The story has a lot of action and several twists and surprises (some old characters even turn up). The plot is never overly-confusing though. Westerfeld does a great job of creating (and explaining) the futuristic world he has created in these pages so that it truly comes to life on the page.At the same time, Extras is a very timely book. In a world where everyone seems to have some kind of website and is trying to be more popular or more famous, it's fascinating to read about a city where everything literally depends on your reputation. Westerfeld raises a lot of interesting questions as Aya deals with the ethics of kicking her new story and tries to decide if honesty really is more important than fame.
—Emma
I was very amused by the dedication of this novel: "To everyone who wrote to me to reveal the secret definition of the word 'trilogy'."This takes place some years after Tally takes down society, and vows to protect the Earth. Aya is 15 in what is today's Japan. Her parents won't allow her to start having surge until she is 16. Aya thinks they wish that it were still the Prettytime. Her rank in the city is far too low for her to afford any, anyway. Her feed is read by almost nobody, so her facerank is too low to receive merits for the writing in it. All she wants is to get famous and stop being a self-named-ugly. She found a story to kick in a secret clique that despises fame and wants to stay off of the city feeds. Her story about a secret clique turns into a story about city-killing missiles and the end of the world. Someone doesn't want her story to get out and Aya is forced to go on the run with the famous Tally Youngblood.Basically, this is a city run by how many people follow your Twitter and Facebook feeds! Eek! I don't know about you, but that sounds terrifying. We self-rank ourselves enough because of these twisted social networks, we don't need economy based on it as well!It seems a common review of this series that people liked it less and less as the novels went on. Somehow I found myself in the minority and enjoying these novels more and more. They were all four star books, but were I to rank them, I liked Extras more than Specials more than Pretties more than Uglies. I think that for me it was the widening world more than anything else that did it for me. While the stories were all fairly similar, it made me think of what each new division of the culture was doing in the previous book. What were the Specials up to in Pretties and Uglies? What were the Crims up to in Uglies? What have Tally and friends been doing since Specials? Yes, there's a formula, and yes, I can see how the books were predictable. But you know what? I thought they were fun to read. I found the issues they addressed to be important enough, that the predictability was forgivable. I found the writing flowed well enough that I simply didn't have time to be bored.
—Aryn
