The second installment of Scott Westerfeld’s New York Times bestselling and award-winning Uglies series—a global phenomenon that started the dystopian trend. Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she’s completely popular. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. But beneath all the fun—the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom—is a nagging sense that something’s wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally’s ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what’s wrong with pretty life, and the fun stops cold. Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life—because the authorities don’t intend to let anyone with this information survive.
The first two novels of Scott Westerfeld’s New York Times bestselling series—a global phenomenon that started the dystopian trend—now available in one edition. Tally can’t wait to turn sixteen. Only then will she be able to have an operation to turn her from a repellant ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and live in New Pretty Town—a high-tech paradise where her only job will be to have fun. But when Tally finally becomes pretty, everything isn’t as perfect as it seems. Underneath all the beauty and luxury is a nagging sense that something is wrong. Very wrong. Searching for the truth, Tally discovers a whole new side of the pretty world—and it isn’t very pretty. Now Tally has a choice to make: fight to forget what she knows or fight for her life.
"Special Circumstances" - These words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a rebellious Ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumour - frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting a Special. But Tally's never been ordinary… Now she's been turned into one of them: a superamped fighting machine, engineered to keep the Uglies down and the Pretties stupid. The strength, the speed, and the clarity and focus of her thinking feel better than anything Tally can remember… most of the time. One tiny corner of her heart still remembers something more. Still, it's easy to tune that out - until Tally's offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently. It all comes down to one last choice: carry out the mission she's programmed to complete, or listen to that tiny, faint heartbeat telling her that something's wrong… Either way, Tally's world will never be the same.
At the end of Specials, the conclusion to the Uglies trilogy, things in Tally's futuristic world had stabilised. The walls between the social classes - the uglies, pretties and specials - had been torn down. So Tally took off to live on her own in the wild. Fast forward... Tally discovers another brand new world. In Extras, it's all about who you know, and how much you have. It's just like LA. Only Paris and Nicole are way dead...
Darby's Polka Dots and Pretties takes Darby and his little l'agon friend, K'Orac, on a special adventure that celebrates his mother. On their way to the meadow of pretties, K'Orac chases a light bug through the forest, leading Darby to the discovery of the beautiful glowing green pretty. Wanting to make his mother the best wrap of pretties he has ever given her, Darby picks a few of the glowing pretties and puts them into the wrap with the pink and purple pretties from the meadow. Darby returns to the village a changed m'ite. What happens next leads Darby to find confidence in himself and be proud of the small differences in who he is.
Before The Hunger Games, there was… Uglies. Fast-paced, chilling and thought-provoking - this ebook collection will leave you wondering. Beauty guaranteed-but at what price? In Tally's world, at sixteen you are transformed from a repellent Ugly into a stunningly attractive Pretty, and catapulted into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a great time. But Tally is tired of it. And the choices she makes changes her world forever. First as an ugly, then a pretty, and finally a special, Tally takes down the social infrastructure. And then, a generation later, a world obsessed with fame and instant celebrity - and filled with extras - will reap the consequences. This ebook boxed set includes all four titles in the international bestselling series.
Five years ago, Mila Carmody disappeared from her bed, and that was only the beginning. Now eight-year-old Vonnie Feinstein is missing as well. Two little girls, swallowed by darkness, never to be seen again. For Micah Ganaway, it might be the end. Arrested for child abduction, he’s already been tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty. The lead detective assures him the trial is just a formality. But private investigator Hallie Chastain isn’t so certain. On paper, Ganaway makes a reasonable suspect, but in person, things don’t quite add up. Detective Ford Prestia doesn’t share his partner’s convictions either, but he’s the new cop in town. Can’t afford to rock the boat. Then he meets Hallie, and when she rocks not only the boat but his whole world, he finds his career isn’t the only thing in jeopardy…
Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik), course: Figurations of Survival in Dystopian (Young Adult) Fiction, language: English, abstract: Scott Westerfeld`s trilogy Uglies – Pretties – Specials tells us about the 15-year-old girl Tally who lives in a society whose citizens (have to) undergo an operation in order to be made pretty as soon as they get 16 years old. The books could easily be taken for prominently criticizing callomania, i.e. the excessive love of and craving for beauty and the respective extreme efforts people make to appear beautiful and thus correspond to a certain ideal. It is widely acknowledged that Western countries have developed into societies whose citizens spend remarkable amounts of time and money in the “improvement” or “maintenance” of their fitness and body appearance. Since the 1980s, an increasing number of so-called body image disorders is reported. More and more and even younger people suffer from a systematic depreciation of their bodies as they compare them to ideal and imaginative body images (Menninghaus, Winfried: Das Versprechen der Schönheit. Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp, 2007: 250-251). It therefore seems a first and logical approach to see Westerfeld`s books as a major criticism of today`s (Western)societies and media which make people perceive their bodies as negative and inferior. As they are considered to be dystopian fictions, we anticipate Westerfeld`s novels to carry a warning reference to the reader`s present society. In this sense, Westerfeld`s books offer a most sinister view on how far we could get if we are advancing technologies like aesthetic surgery and genetic engineering without reconsidering how, why and to what extent we use them. We assume this critical warning to be embodied in the protagonist Tally who tries to succeed in disengaging from the ideology indoctrinated by her city. This paper wants to “track” the critical approaches we find in the novels and examine whether the narrations really live up to the criticism apparently promised. It will look at the concepts of beauty the protagonist Tally is confronted with and refer to current scientific and popular discourses about these respective concepts. Finally, a connection shall be drawn between the issues raised in the novels and the genre chosen to work on them. Why are “beauty” and “body” relevant topics to be treated in Young Adult fiction? And how does the genre Young Adult literature change the portrayal and reception of the issues? Questions like these shall be dealt with in order to review the books` message in the context of their intended readership.
