Pretties is the continuing story to Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.
Those of you whom have not read Uglies yet are going to be pretty confused by this review. So read Uglies, and come back later…or continue if you want, the choice is yours.
Anyhow, Tally Youngblood has been transformed into a pretty, solely to test the drug made by the Smokies (people who escaped the transformation and live in the wild, now in hiding) to see if the pill they have invented will cure the pretties’ brainwashed minds.
You see the ‘pretties’ are dumb simple-minded humans, transformed into what the Government wants out of people. They do as they are told without so much a thought as to why. They are perfect specimens of human beings, they never fight, they never argue…they are always perfect. Like a Stepford Wife.
The Government has implanted their brains with a chip to make them this way.
Tally gave herself away to the Specials (those who work for the Government) so she could test the drug, and report back to the Smokies if it worked or if it caused problems.
This feat though proves to be no easy task. Now that Tally is a pretty, so is her mind. She nearly forgets all about her purpose to the Smokies. She has met a new boyfriend, forgetting all about David (a guy from Smoke, she fell in love with in the first novel), until one day at a Pretty party a Smokie crashes it and delivers a message to her.
The message eventually takes Tally and her new boyfriend on a quest to figuring out what the note means. After following some clues they come across the 2 pills. The cure to being pretty! At last!
They both take one, and this is where our story begins to gain some action. It was all boring and yawn like till this part kicked the book up a notch.
After taking the ‘cure’ pills, both their minds begin to grow clear and Tally once again remembers her purpose. To let the Smokies know that the cure is safe, and that they can start giving it out to all of the pretties to cure them of their brainwashed minds.
There is a problem though Tally’s boyfriend Zane keeps getting terrible headaches, and they wonder if it is from the cure pill. Now the two must venture out of Pretty town to find the Smokies to get help for Zane, and to let them know that the cure does work, but Zane for some reason gets headaches from it. Tally however is still feeling fine and all bubbly (a word overly used in this book to describe- feeling normal and not pretty minded)
Escaping proves no easy task. Everything in Pretty town has eyes. Street lamps, and flying cars and boards with GPS like systems in them, and not to mention the fact that Tally and Zane have become such a problem in Pretty Town that the Special Circumstances have cuffed them with tracking bracelet’s. So escaping includes removal of the cuffs, and getting out of town unseen.
Again this proves to be no simple task seeing how a friend has suddenly turned on Tally, and has eyes of her own.
This is where I have my first issue. This books main battle deals with Tally getting back to Smoke. Or I should say The New Smoke. However this is mainly what her battle was in the first book Uglies. She has to find Smoke on her hover board once again. Only this time, she looses the hover board, which prolongs the adventure back to Smoke.
Now in the wilderness Tally looses Zane and a few other Pretties who have come along to escape Pretty Town. She is all alone now, and runs into some odds and ends that include tribesmen who thinks she’s a God.
I honestly don’t even know why that was thrown in there. But it did make some sense, something about human guinea pigs to be tested on by the Government and what not, that sort of got tossed into the mix of the book.
I was very disappointed in this book. Again nothing from the first book had even been answered. Tally has thrown David to the side, even though he was the original reason why she was doing this whole thing in the first place. I just grew confused, and angry as the book began to drag on and on into a jungle like adventure with flying cars that was practically the same story as the last book.
Does Zane get a cure for the headaches? Does the cure work? Why don’t Tally and David like each other anymore? What’s with David’s mom? What’s up with the new pulse beating tattoos, and why is Shay covered in them? Whatever happened to the kids who were joining Smoke last year, why are they not anything of importance in this book installment?
You are given a few answers to questions you had from the first book, but just when you think you as a reader are finally going to get some final answers they throw the big dot, dot, dot at you.
That’s right, you want to know more, buy my next book. Specials…
Come on brutha! Thankfully though I believe that Specials is the last book in the installment.
It’s pretty obvious what will happen in that one as well, dare I even read it. Tally was ugly in Uglies, a Pretty in Pretties
Most likely she’s now going to be a Special Agent in Specials. It’s logic really.
Overall Opinion:
Pretties was like reading the book Uglies, only with the word Pretties used more often. It was nearly the same with a similar long winded adventure back to Smoke. I’m convinced the continuing story will be the same only with a longer battle thrown somewhere in the middle or the end of the book.
More rides on hover boards through rivers and trees. The same. Nothing changes except Tally’s face on every cover.
Recommendation:
Stop now and save yourself the time and money. However if you already have read the first book, you probably need to read this one just to move on with the story. Know though, that this is not the last of the story. Specials is, and is only available in hard cover as of now for a shocking $15-$20 depending on where you buy it.
Pretties will run you from $7-$10 and is a paper back, consisting of 384 pages. It’s an acceptable read for anyone from 13-100. No violence, no gore, some mild kissing is all there is regarding sexual content, but it’s like one or two small kisses throughout the book.
I just cannot stand that I got sucked in with Uglies…because of this I have to read the final installment to see if it was worth the trip to Borders on 3 separate occasions.
