(EDITED: Updated star-status at the end)Is this book really as bad I as I think it is? I need more friends to read this, to reassure me that it really is awful and it's not just that I'm sick (which I am. I mean, with bronchitis.) So do it! Read this! And tell me it is bad!! ("Ew, this is awful! taste it!")Anyway, i'd say 2 stars just because i feel guilty giving only 1 star and I *did* finish it. So, 1.5 stars. Because you know something is wrong when "It Was Okay" sounds way too generous...Where to start?Could there be a more unlikeable main character? I know I'm not the target audience, age-wise, but geeze, as a female, I'd at least like to like her as a fellow female, even if a young one. And I don't. She's the exact sort of insipid, unintelligent, first-this-man-now-this-one type of female character I don't like. So, there's that straight off the bat. (Shay is a way better character.)And then there is just the whole story telling, which is ridiculous for the most part. I mean, there is this whole section where Tally is with a primitive tribe (no! she really is! I can't even get into the whole 'what is this i don't even...' of that part as a whole) and she notices the women are making a fire for cooking (the men having just been out warrioring about, as it were) and she thinks -- snidely, I might add -- "oh yeah, i remember in Olden Times women used to get the crappy jobs". What? Leaving aside the fact that all of a sudden Tally seems to know/remember a lot of things, despite the fact that she was pretty clueless about ancient history in the first book (and this is a big thing to "leave aside" because it annoyed the f*** out of me), why on earth would she automatically assume cooking was a crappy job? I mean, she's never cooked. She lives in a society where food comes fully prepared to you pretty much technomagically and it has been this way for hundreds of years. Aside for that extremely brief period out in the wild where *someone* made stew (and I don't think it was Tally and I'm pretty sure it was likely communally done male/female equally), Tally knows jack shit about cooking. Certainly a person like that would never make an assumption that cooking = crappy job so OH NOEZ SEXIST PIGS (another concept that would be entirely alien to her in practice). And she's snide about the issue more than once.Gah.It seems to me that, if anything, given her recent experience Outside the only and/or first thing she would have thought was "oh! hey! I wonder how THEY go about setting up their fire pit/spits/outdoor kitchens/etc" in the spirit of this-is-new-and-interesting-to-observe and not this weird misplaced snide feminism for pet's sake.Alright, I'm probably belaboring what seems like a minor point but my point is the book is pretty much entirely full of little points like that. It's awful.And then it all wraps up neatly (not without fanning the flame of LOVE TRIANGLE in the last few pages though! couldn't skip that bit!) and once again Tally (view spoiler)[is captured but instead of all these trouble makers being just done away with -- I mean it hardly seems like a government that goes through all this other trouble with society would balk at that -- now she's going to be SPECIAL (hide spoiler)]
Here's what I wrote on my book club blog about Pretties, and the whole series: Westerfeld knows that he's writing to teens, so he's trying to address a LOT of issues that teens face. One is, obviously, being superficial. Remember reading the teen magazines, hearing all of the celebrity gossip (not to mention your own school gossip), trying to dress well and be "cool?" Maybe you were better than I was and didn't get pulled into that, but most teens are. And often the pull doesn't go away once you turn 20 and aren't a teen anymore. I still find myself tempted to read the covers of the gossip magazines at the grocery store, to watch another cookie-cutter, uninspiring chick flick or to read the mindless quick-read books. It's harder to choose the book that I'll struggle through but that will make me think and maybe even change, or to turn off the tv when a couple of beautiful people are on the screen, no matter what kind of dumb things they're saying. When Peris chooses the promise of blissful ignorance and laxity of the Pretty society, part of you can't really blame him. Who wants problems? Who wants to have to think and to work when we can just be entertained instead? We have to consciously choose to resist that pull, and teens are just being introduced to it.Another issue is our treatment of the environment. I think that Westerfeld isn't advocating the pristine, sustainable development of the Pretty society, or the wasteful stupidity of the Rusties (our present state), but something in between that Tally gets a glimpse of with the Smokies. A reverence and appreciation for nature, but an understanding that nature is to provide for our needs, and so cutting down a tree is not a sin (some tree-hugging extremists today might take the Pretties side on this, don't you think?).When the Rusties come along, he's again attacking our tendencies for senseless violence, adherence to illogical traditions (women's subservience) just because "it's always been that way," and even religious piety. "Question authority!" he's saying all throughout the book. That's what teens do naturally, but he's targeting an authority that they don't always recognize - the media. Teens now can't live without their iPods, they go to the movies every weekend, spend hours and hours online and are basically overloaded by the media. All of this keeps them from thinking on their own. This book makes you think and hopefully can encourage some teens to think on their own and pull themselves away from all of the media that tries so hard to tell them what to think. In addition to all of his preaching, Westerfeld writes a captivating series with convincing characters and and draws you into his intriguing world as you read his books.
What do You think about Pretties (2005)?
I read the first book of the series, Uglies, and really liked it. This one... the "Pretty" talk was very annoying; the word "bubbly" or the phrase pretty-making really got on my nerves. The love triangle was trite. The book lacked emotional depth but that might be it just being a teen novel? Not sure it's a fair criticism. Oh, and once again she finds a guy that thinks she's so special and wonderful and "the one" more or less. Talk about trite...This book wasn't as good as the first and a chunk
—Dawn Livingston
What I found most interesting about Pretties was its thematic use of various forms of bodily mutilation/eating disorders. In a perfect society, where everyone is brain-damaged into peace and transformed into absolutely perfectly beautiful creatures, how do you rebel? By starving yourself, cutting yourself - in a lesser sense, by covering your body in tattoos. (Tattoos as mutilation is a controversial thought, and I'm not sure I know where I stand with it - I mean, are some tattoos okay, but a body full of them not? The social stigma and our association of tattoos with crime, wild people, tramps, etc. has a lot to do with it. I like my tattoo, and Jim's three tattoos, and yet I really don't want either of us to get any more. It's kind of weird.) But these teenage boys and girls - they look perfect, they've been surgically transformed into the universal pinnacle of beauty, and they're still starving or mutilating themselves in order to "wake up," to "feel it." It's a very dark aspect of this series, one I'd like to see addressed in further detail, if possible.I'm very excited to read the last installment in the series, Specials. I'm just waiting for it to come out in paperback so I can complete my set.
—Jessica
Love, Love, Love!!! I totally love it. And here are some of my coments:You learn more about the "Rusties" in this one. It was kind of creepy. They refer to us as stupid....Maybe we are. I mean look at what we are doing to the planet that we live on. We are killing the planet. And you know what they say, that there is going to be more and more of us in the future. And she said that the oil thing, killing most of the "Rusties", saved the planet. Well, I don't like the "killing most of the popuatio
—Violet
