Specials

I finished the "Uglies" trilogy and I have to say first, I....am not a teenager. I know, I know. Shocker. I read this because my son asked for the first book and I read it off his bookshelf. Uglies was not so bad. It was teen-angsty but it was a fun, mixed up world. Pretties was not bad either. But by the time I read "Specials," it was pretty formulaic, which is why I say I am not a teen. I don't want to knock a teen writer's writing.

By formulaic I mean, kid thinks one way, then after going through hard times, thinks a totally different way, only to be bonked in the head my the bad guys and forced into her original ideas anyway. All three books were the same thing. Tally thinks she wants "A" but after many struggles, she wants "B" but the bad bad government forces "A" on her. In this book, she was forced to be a "Special," a super-human scary strong government bad guy and eventually breaks out of it. Like she broke out of being pretty in the book before, like she broke out of being an Ugly destined for prettiness.

Anyway, it was a quick read. Some things bugged me, including cutting scenes. Cutting. It was disturbing. This is a book for teens and although you know she's a bad guy while she is doing it, it is still disturbing knowing that this book is showing kids cutting themselves to feel "icy."

That's another thing, the language tended to bother me. Adjectives like Icy and Random describe people. And the nicknames (Tally-Wa, Shay-La, Zane-la) were annoying.

So again I say, I am not 16, I am an old establishment fart, so this book was not for me.