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Overview
Extras, the final book in the Uglies series, is set a couple of years after the “mind-rain,” a few earth-shattering months in which the whole world woke up. The cure has spread from city to city, and the pretty regime that kept humanity in a state of bubbleheadedness has ended. Boundless human creativity, new technologies, and old dangers have been unleashed upon the world. Culture is splintering, the cities becoming radically different from each other as each makes its own way into this strange and unpredictable future . . .
One of the features of the new world is that everyone has a "feed," which is basically their own blog/myspace/tv channel. The ratings of your feed (combined with how much the city interface overhears people talking about you) determines your social status—so everyone knows at all times how famous they are.
As Scott Westerfeld explored the themes of extreme beauty in the first three Uglies books, now he takes on the world's obsession with fame and popularity. And how anyone can be an instant celebrity.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The world has become a different place since Tally Youngblood upset the Uglies, Pretties, Specials applecart. What it's like? Well, visualize an all-day, everyday version of American Idol, where everybody's a contestant and there are cameras everywhere. In this constant competition, teenager Aya Fuse ranks as a nobody; 451,369 to be exact. Of course, such obscurity has its small rewards, all of which have now become endangered by her friendship with the Sly Girls. Another futuristic thriller by Uglies trilogy author Scott Westerfeld.James Hynes
Extras is just as thrilling as its predecessors, but it's also a thoughtful novel of ideas, a brilliant parody of the modern obsession with fame. Like almost everyone else in her world, Aya records everything she does with the help of a semi-sentient hovercam (a sort of floating soccer ball that's a cross between R2D2 and Weegee), using the resulting footage to boost her face rank. It's as if the whole world were like Facebook, with every citizen simultaneously a celebrity and his or her own paparazzi. The situation is the opposite of the enforced egalitarianism of beauty in the earlier books; here, Westerfeld slyly shows what happens when you take the brakes off and let the market of media exposure determine individual worth. With its combination of high-stakes melodrama, cinematic action and thought-provoking insight into some really thorny questions of human nature, the new novel, like its predecessors, is a superb piece of popular art, reminiscent less of other young adult books than of another pop masterpiece, the revived "Battlestar Galactica."—The New York Times
Children's Literature -
Welcome to the world of Aya Fuse, a fifteen-year-old Ugly whose popularity ranking is rock bottom. In her city with its reputation-economy—where merits and face rankings determine who gets the best mansions, the most carbon emissions, and the biggest wall allowances—being noticed and popular is all important. But not to the Sly Girls. Aya has heard rumors about them—a secretive clique of daredevil young women who are not interested in popularity at all. If Aya can hook up with them, record their fear-making antics, and kick their story, she is certain to get a major boost in her rank. Sheer luck and guts get Aya in with the group. Now she finds herself torn between betraying the nascent friendships she has developed and her own self interest. But the discovery of strange beings secretly stockpiling what can only be missiles changes everything. Aya must kick her story to save the world. And it does not hurt that the added bonus will be a skyrocketing face rank that could put Aya in with the exalted 1000 Faces. Unfortunately Aya is about to learn that fame has its dark side. An astonishingly well-told story about a future society where popularity rules. Think American Idol, FaceBook and MySpace coming into your eyescreen and skintenna on a continuous 24/7 feed. Read the first three titles in the "Uglies" series before beginning this one; with the story's many references to past events and characters, having some prior knowledge will make reading this book much more enjoyable. Highly recommended. Reviewer: Anita Barnes LowenSchool Library Journal
Gr 7 Up
Westerfeld delivers another page-turner in the fourth book of his series, neatly tying previous narrative threads together with characters from former novels but allowing readers to enjoy this one with no prior knowledge of earlier books. In a society based on "face" (a social ranking), a 15-year-old "ugly" longs to be famous. With atypical teenage angst, Aya Fuse hatches a plan to "kick" herself into the top thousand most famous people. As she researches the Sly Girls who she saw riding the mag-lev on hoverboards, she stumbles into a much larger story involving city-killing missiles and strange nonhuman beings. Teens will find themselves drawn to Aya, who soon discovers, through her own experiences, that fame isn't everything and popularity comes with negatives that she hadn't before considered.
—June H. KeuhnCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.