If you haven’t read the book yet, I do go into the ending in this piece so if you don’t want to know how Uglies ends, move along now.

Uglies is the first book in a four book series by Scott Westerfeld. It takes us into the future where society as we know it has disentegrated and our society as we live today is referred to as The Rusties.

Within this new world there are several divides. Ugly town, Pretty Town and the authoritative City which also encompasses Special Circumstances, a secret service of the new world.

The premise of the book is that when everyone turns sixteen they are given an operation which transforms them into a Pretty, someone who is of perfect dimension, based on their biology, so everyone is different, yet the same as they are given the exact proportions of what is determined to be pretty by the order of the City surgeons.

We meet Tally gate crashing a Pretty party to visit her newly Pretty childhood friend Peris. He has settled into life in New Pretty Town with all his new pretty friends, and as Tally is still an ugly she has broken many rules by even visiting him. During her escape from Pretty Town on her hoverboard, she meets Shay and they become close friends, pulling tricks while waiting to turn 16 on the same day. Tally is obsessed with turning Pretty while Shay is not so sure, and begins to talk to Tally about an alternative to the operation.

The Smokies are a rumoured group of rebels who refuse the operation and stay Ugly and live out in the wild in their own civilisation. They are highly sought after by the City as a threat to the order it has created.

On the eve of the operation Shay decides to leave the city to live with the smokies and leaves Tally a cryptic note describing how to find her and how to get to The Smoke. On the day of Tally’s operation instead of being taken to be transformed, she is arrested by the city and given an ultimatum by the ruling Dr Cable, to find The Smoke while carrying a tracking device and then to turn the tracking device on once she has arrived so the city can come and destroy the rebels.

Tally arrives at the smoke and meets David, a natural ugly who is 18, an age that Tally has never seen untransformed into Prettiness. They begin a romance which crushes her friend Shay who had her own romantic ideas about David.

David teaches Tally everything he knows about the wild, about his philosophy about the City and most importantly what the operation actually does. It not only transforms your body, but it transforms your mind as well so that you cannot think for yourself or question authority. The city injects nanos into your brain which keep you under their control through compliance. David’s parents have found what they believe to be a cure but it is untested on a Pretty.

Tally is convinced about the Smoke’s objectives and understands the controlling nature of the city and decides to stay in the Smoke and not to betray it to the City and throws the tracking device into the fire, inadvertently triggering the tracking device. The city Specials arrive the next day and destroy the smoke and Tally is exposed as a traitor. To try to prove her intentions, she volunteers to return to the city to be transformed into a Pretty so that they can try the cure on her. Shay is kidnapped by the specials and transformed into a Pretty.

This is where Uglies finishes.

Themes

If you’re studying Uglies as a prescribed text there are many themes to consider.

Beauty
What constitutes beauty and what benefits are there to being beautiful? What would happen if everyone was beautiful? In Uglies although everyone is created ‘the same’ there are still differences. The idea behind the transformation was to rid society of anorexia, jealousy, wars. If everyone was perfect there would be nothing to be angry about because everyone is wonderful. However, even within the Pretties, there are slight jealousies about clothes, eye colour, hair colour. The nature of the human condition has not been changed by its outward appearance.

Possessions and Status
In our modern world we revere beauty and there are many statistics to support that the more attractive a person is perceived, the better they will do in life in terms of material wealth and societal status. Pretty Town tries to eliminate this by providing everything a pretty could want, food, clothes, accommodation. Everything is taken care of and everything is uniform aside from some minute personal choices. However, it was also deemed necessary by the capital for the minds of the pretties to be altered to accept this as normal and not to argue or become overly jealous about the appearance or use of possessions of others. Providing beauty and goods alone does not quieten the nature of man.

The Power of the Human Mind

Throughout Uglies, the idea that a person can overcome brainwashing by the power of one’s own mind is a strong thematic concern and indeed runs through the whole series. The ability to take on learned knowledge, new ideas, and to find one’s own belief system are strongly demonstrated.

The Power of a Single Idea

The nature of society and government is examined and boiled down to the power of a single idea being enough to bring an empire down. This can be reflected through history in terms of communism, socialism, the Germans in WW2. It has only ever been a single idea, from one person, that has created great movements in society and this is demonstrated intensely in Uglies and throughout the series.

Summary

Uglies is a tricky read to begin with so give yourself at least the first 50 pages to get into the world and the use of language. Once you conquer it, it’s a great ride.

Westerfeld has written an accompanying book From Bogus to Bubbly which translates some of the language used in the book and also the technology and the hoverboards that everyone wants, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it until you’ve read all four books in the series otherwise some cliff hangers are totally ruined.

The series continues with Pretties, Specials and then Extras which takes up the story 3 years later. I”ll add further cliff notes about Pretties and Specials at a later date, as for those who haven’t read Uglies it can detract from the first book and also the whole series.

Westerfeld is a great writer and I’m currently reading the Midnighter series which will also have cliff notes soon once I”ve finished the entire series. Although the Uglies series is classed as teen fiction, it is a great read for any age group and each book leaves on a huge cliff hanger so you can hardly wait to get your hands on the next one. I can see it becoming a classic work as a prescribed text for the number of themes raised in the work for the teens but it is also thought provoking for anyone who thinks.

Highly recommended.

Update: Here is a link Extras book review I  hope you enjoy

Meanwhile, Victoria is still tracking Bella and the wereworlves and vampires have a nasty exchange in a border incident while both sides were trying to catch Victoria.

Seattle is now the scene of massacre as new vampires wreak havoc on the city, killing at random. The Cullens are watching this carefully and fear Volturi intervention.

A mysterious vampire visitor to Bella’s room has everyone on edge as it is a new scent. Someone is making more vampires without supervision and the problem is escallating.

Jacob and Bella’s relationship intensifies as she realises that she is also in love with him, but not as strongly as she is with Edward.

Alice finally has a vision of what is to come, a swarm of new vampires are coming to attack the town, led by Victoria, to kill Bella.  The Cullens are outnumbered and enter into an alliance with the werewolves whose pack numbers are now 10.

Bella tries to entice Edward into making love to her, but he will only do so after they are married and the engagement is made official.

The wolves and Cullen’s train together for the battle.

Jacob and Edward come to understand each other in a camp out before the battle.  They realise that they both love Bella equally and agree that Jacob would be the better choice for her, but Bella has chosen Edward regardless.

The vampire pack attack and Edward and Bella are cornered by Victoria and Riley, a new vampire she made for this purpose alone.

Edward eventually wins with the help of Seth, the youngest werewolf, beheading and dismembering Victoria in front of a terrified Bella.  Seth has shredded Riley and both corpses are burned.

On the other side of the field, Jacob is critically injured.  Carlisle and the Cullen’s take him home to La Push.  He has several fractures including, right leg, arm and several ribs.  He heals too quicly and Carlisle has to re-break some bones.

The Volturi arrive at the end of the battle, incredulous that the Cullens had defeated 20 new born vampires and Victoria.  They also check on Bella’s progress and are told that a date has been set for her transformation.

Bella visits and says her goodbyes to him as she tells him of her decision to marry Edward.

Alice is over the moon being allowed to arrange the wedding for the 13th August.

The book ends with a devastated Jacob having received the wedding invitation, because Edward felt he should have the choice to attend, and phases into a wolf, resolving never to become human again.

By now I”ve been picking a few literary faults, but the story is so fast paced and compelling, that the writing style is not annoying enough to keep me from reading. As with all popular fiction, it’s the story, not necessarily the way it’s written, that keep readers glued (and up until three in the morning) completing these books.

Ralph is made leader and the goal of the group is to have fun and keep a signal fire burning for rescue. They use Piggy’s glasses to light it.

Jack begins to hunt for food and forms another group of boys which eventually separate and form another tribe.

This is the group that becomes more savage and eventually kill another boy.

Jack’s tribe steal Piggy’s glasses to take control of fire, kill Piggy in an accident and capture the last two remaining members of Ralph’s tribe. They set the island alight with fire searching for Ralph to capture him and the fire is seen by a passing ship and the boys are rescued.

Lord of the Flies is a microcosm of society and man with the key themes being:
Conch represents law and order, smoke symbolises hope, glasses represent voice of reason.

Golding’s main theme was to trace the problems of society on the sins of man. Anarchy defeats order and this is the underlying belief that Golding had about society. Law and order is a tenuous calm at best.

Lord of the Flies is considered a classic in much the way that Shakespeare is, in that human nature has not changed, and in the Flies it reduces society onto a small island where all the issues that man faces were brought to the forefront.

It has been continually debated for nearly 60 years and is still studied in schools.

Firstly I think Joel Comm has totally missed his calling and should just concentrate on writing.  He has a real gift and this book is an excellent story, intermingling facts with just enough story to create a rich text.

There is so much information jam packed within the stories of how famous internet marketers like John Reese, Rich Schefren, Rosalind Gardiner, Yanik Silver, Jay Abrahams and hundreds more, all got started and what they are most remembered for.

All of the marketer’s personal stories are overlayed upon the history of how the internet even came to be and what it actually began as and what it has evolved into, to date.

To date being the operative phrase and conclusion of the book as Joel Comm tries to look into the future to see where the next big thing will be.

He finishes off by profiling a story of an Iranian girl, Ladan Lashkari, borrowed from Eric Holmlund’s blog. The cliff note is she doesn’t have one advantage that we do but is still managing to earn $US6,300 a month.

The story from all of these marketers is that they laser focused on one thing or one niche or one topic that they knew and took it from there.  What they learned from their first experiences they took to their second and so on.

So even though what I know is not savory, I also know there’s a huge and growing market for it so I’m taking all the tips I learned and going forward with it.

History is important.  To know where something has come from, you can judge where it may lead.  Joel Comm has given an excellent, and relatively concise history of who, what, when and where and wrapped it in entertaining ditties about the personal struggles of the big guys.

Fantastic and highly recommended read for anyone, but EVERYONE who is even THINKING of starting an online business.

Joel, can we please have more books?  You are a fantastic writer. Well done mate.

Kath