The Journal of Curious Letters

Title: The Journal of Curious Letters
Author: James Dashner
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-fi
Source: Library Thing's Early Reviewers
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Tick is a nearly normal 13-year old. He's a bit nerdy and loves solving puzzles, and never takes off the scarf which covers his birthmark (even in the summer).

Then one day he receives a mysterious letter in the mail which changes his life forever.

"The Journal of Curious Letter" is amusing, and I think I will be reading the rest of the series as it is released in paperback, but I did have some issues with it.

I know that my copy was an unproofed ARC, but there were several typos and/or omitted words. The author also tries too hard in places to be funny, and has an unnatural obsession (it seems) with the number 3.

Specials

Title: Specials
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Tally is now a Cutter, a special Special - designed to hunt down and take out the New Smoke, wherever it may be. However, she still has some troubles. She needs Zane, her old boyfriend, to be Special like the Cutters (so named because they cut themselves to retain "icy" clarity from the overwhelming input their new bodies and senses give them). In order to convince Special Circumstances to turn Zane Special, she and Shay devise a plan, a tricky plan, one that will change not only their lives but the entire world.

I loved this book! It went along at the same fast-paced speed as Uglies: as fast as Tally's new hoverboard or as her reflexes as a Special. I couldn't put it down except when I was too tired to keep my eyes open. I wanted to know what was going to happen - was Zane going to be alright? Were Shay and Tally ever going to be reconciled? Were David and Tally ever going to be reconciled? What was going to happen to the New Smoke, to Tally's city, and to Diego (the city Tally eventually tracks old friends to)?

I highly recommend this series! It has so much going on - sci-fi, dystopian fiction, a social commentary, an environmental commentary, and the list goes on. And it does it all flawlessly, in a fast-paced, high-adrenaline story you can't stop until the last page is done. I've got the next book, Extras, on hold at the library and am eagerly waiting my turn with it.

Pretties

Title: Pretties
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Tally Youngblood, now pretty, is having the time of her life - or so she thinks. She's beautiful, healthy, and completely spoiled. Encouraged to party and "surge" (surgically alter herself) and be generally vapid, Tally gets twinges that she's not happy like she's supposed to be. Then she gets a message from her old, ugly self. She knows what's wrong. She and her clique, the "Crims," attempt to keep their heads clear - to keep "bubbly" instead of "pretty-headed" and to escape from the clutches of the city authorities known as Special Circumstances.

Pretties was a good follow-up to Uglies, though not quite as gripping. True, it was still fast-paced and when I picked it up I didn't want to put it down, but I didn't have the driving urge to pick it back up once I'd put it down that I had when I read Uglies. That could have been because Tally was already pretty and was constantly fighting the pretty-headed fog surgically altered into her brain, and that fog certainly comes across in the prose of the book.

In all, I liked the book, and want to know what happens in Specials and then in Extras.

Uglies

Title: Uglies
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Source: Border's
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Uglies takes place in a utopian/dystopian (yes, it can be both) America several hundred years in the future. In this future, everyone turns "pretty" (ie, has a surgery to bring one's body and face to a physical point which is very close to average, and biologically pleasing) on their sixteenth birthday - and pretties are not only beautiful, but vapid, vain, and entirely focused on having fun.

Tally is looking forward to the operation and being able to rejoin her friend Peris, until her friend Shay shows her a different option: run away to the wilderness and the Smoke, never turn pretty but keep your own choices. When Shay herself runs away to the Smoke, leaving Tally behind to have the operation she is so looking forward to, the authorities (Special Circumstances) offer Tally a terrible choice: go after Shay and turn her and the Smoke in, or never. Ever. Have the operation and turn pretty. The choices she makes and the information she discovers changes her life forever.

I found it hard to get through the first few chapters. Until Tally meets Shay, she is as vapid as the pretties she is eager to join. However, once the two girls meet, the book just FLIES. The only reason it took me two days to finish it instead of one is because I started it very late in the night and didn't want to stay up until dawn.

This is truly a book I would recommend to any fan of young adult fiction and/or sci-fi.