Product Description

Tally lives in a world where your sixteenth birthday brings aesthetic perfection: an operation which erases all your flaws, transforming you from an 'Ugly' into a 'Pretty'. She is on the eve of this important event, and cannot wait for her life to change. As well as guaranteeing supermodel looks, life as a Pretty seems to revolve around having a good time. But then she meets Shay, who is also fifteen - but with a very different outlook on life. Shay isn't sure she wants to be Pretty and plans to escape to a community in the forest - the Rusty Ruins - where Uglies go to escape ' turning'. Tally won't be persuaded to join her, as this would involve sacrificing everything she's ever wanted for a lot of uncertainty. When she is taken in for questioning on her birthday, however, Tally gets sent to the Ruins anyway - against her will. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she could ever imagine: find her friend Shay and turn her in, or never turn Pretty at all. What she discovers in the Ruins reveals that there is nothing 'pretty' about the transformations...And the choice Tally makes will change her world forever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17161 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review
"Fun, and the many by-the-skin-of-your-teeth escapes and hoverboard chases, plus the non-stop action plotting were enough to catch my attention and have me eagerly wanting more."
-- The Book Smugglers, 6 Aug 09

About the Author
'YA's hippest author' Scott Westerfeld is the author of the hugely popular Uglies series. As well as the Midnighters series and three stand alone YA novels, he has written five science fiction novels for adults. He and his wife, Justine, divide their time between Sydney and New York.

Customer Reviews

terrifically original, exciting fantasy novel for 10+
UGLIES is one of the best children's SF novels I've come across for a year, and as it will get nothing out of its publishers but word-of-mouth I strongly recommend you buy it if you have a daughter going through puberty, because it dramatises the sick, looks-obsessed world we live in like nothing else. Tally can't wait until she's 16 and can be changed by plastic surgery into a Pretty, whose life like that of her best friend, will be filled with parties and fashionable clothes. In the future, everyone looks like a supermodel, and nobody stops to think whether this is a good thing - after all, there are no more wars, are there? But when Tally's new friend Shay takes off to live with the rebel Uglies, Tally is told she will never be made Pretty unless she follows the cryptic directions her friend left for her and betrays the rebels. This Tally is all set to do - until she not only falls in love but discovers just what the surgery awaiting her will do to her brain as well as her body.
Uglies is a really clever and pertinent dystopian fantasy of a kind that asks children whether they really want to give up their individuality to become a blandly perfect being. Exciting, fast-paced and easy to read it tackles the propaganda pumped out by glossy magazines and shows how ugly extreme beauty would be.

A fantastic read for pre-teens.
'Uglies' is a truly fantastic read. An incredibly fast-paced thriller of a story,where every moment is valued. Having not read sci-fi before,I was expecting hordes of alien tribes to come cavorting through a galaxy in outer space at some point, but instead, as I read on, I found only a really satisfying, thought-provoking tale of unnatural beauty and its vices.

Tally Youngblood lives in a world where she gets everything she wants and more, what with the miraculous turnover from ugly to pretty at the age of sixteen. Her perfect world remains in its bubble until she meets Shay, an intriguing new character who changes Tally's life forever, leading her on a strange adventure in which she encounters smokies, specials and learns what really happens in the operation theatre. The novel ends with a shocking cliff hanger which has left me waiting anxiously for the next book in Scott Westerfeld's powerfully written trilogy.

I thoroughly enjoyed 'Uglies' and would highly recomend it to other pre-teen girls like myself.

Fantastic read, unable to put it down.
On reading reviews of this book it seems only aimed at young teenage girls. As I am a 19 year old myself I also found this book fantastic. I couldn't put it down. I found it such as interesting read for in the insight it can give into the perception of beauty. I belive this book can be enjoyed by older and younger teens alike as they will see different things within the book. I came away with desperate to read the second book. I recommend it to all. My boyfriend is also currently enjoying reading it, so maybe it's not just for us girls?