Wednesday, 4 March 2015

REVIEW 'Specials' by Scott Westerfeld

'Specials' by Scott Westerfeld (Uglies Quartet #3)

Goodreads Synopsis:

"The Specials used to be a sinister rumor - frightening beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast.

Now Tally's become one of them: a superamped fighting machine, engineered to keep Uglies down and Pretties stupid. The strength, the speed and the clarity of her new powers feel amazing... most of the time. One tiny corner of Tally's heart still remembers something different.

When she's offered the chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke, she is forced to make one last choice: carry out the mission, or listen to that faint yet persistent heartbeat telling her that something's wrong..."


THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST TWO BOOKS IN THIS SERIES; 'UGLIES' AND 'PRETTIES'

You can find my review for 'Uglies' HERE and my review for 'Pretties' HERE

Hi Elementareaders!

As mentioned above, this is the third book in a series so this review contains spoilers for the previous two books.

‘Specials’ is the third book in the 'Uglies Quartet' by Scott Westerfeld. At the end of the previous book Tally and Zane are captured by Special Circumstances. They also discover that Shay has been turned into a Special. This book picks up about 2 months after the last one left off. Tally has been transformed into a Special and is part of a group known as the Cutters along with Shay and Fausto. The Cutters keep themselves 'icy' (like 'bubbly' for a pretty but with much more clarity) by cutting their skin.

At the beginning of this book the Cutters are crashing an Ugly party to try to find and capture the Smokies who are smuggling nano's into the city and curing the Pretties brain lesions. They discover a Smokey and whilst pursuing her are drawn into an ambush. But from this, Tally finds out that Zane is out of hospital and has been turned into a bubblehead again. Tally makes it her mission to help Zane become bubbly and prove to Dr Cable that he is worthy of being turned into a Cutter so they can be together. It's not that simple however, as Tally faces many obstacles along the way and struggles with overcoming the Special re-wiring in her brain.

I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as the first two. I think it got a little silly how much Tally kept getting her brain and appearance altered and having to find herself again. This book started pretty slowly for me, and I didn't really feel that it picked up until about a quarter of the way through when Tally and Shay break into the Armoury and follow Zane out into the wild. The revelation of the New Smoke was a great twist and it made the whole rebellion feel much bigger. It seemed to be very much the Specials against the rest of the world by the end and almost resulted in a war, the very thing the Specials were trying to protect the world from. I thought this book came to a very satisfying conclusion and am eager to see how this new world pans out in the next one.

I would give this book 3.5 stars :)


Let me know your thoughts on this series in the comments!


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