by Scott Westerfield
ages: 13+
First sentence: “Moggle,” Aya whispered. “You awake?”

The thing I liked most about Uglies — and that I missed most in Pretties and Specials — was that I thought it was a brilliant piece of social commentary. As far as worlds go, the one that Westerfield has created is certainly interesting and over-the-top, but what really drew me in was his observations on beauty and acceptance of self. And that was lost in the whole sci-fi adventure story that occupied the sequels.

Well, social criticism was back in Extras, at least for the first half to two-thirds of the book, and it had me totally captivated. It’s three years after the “mind-rain”: Tally’s dismantling of the world system in the previous three books. In Aya’s city, the way they’ve dealt with it is to create a merit- and reputation-based economy: only those who are popular get the good stuff: nice houses, clothes, invites to all the best parties. Aya is an “extra”, with a face-ranking of nearly 500,000 (in a city of 1 million), she’s someone who doesn’t really matter. She is determined to change that, by “kicking” a story that will get people talking about her, thereby bumping her face rank, and allowing her to get out of the lousy dorm that she’s in. She discovers the Sly Girls, an anonymous clique that thrives off danger and having low face rankings, and infiltrates them in the pursuit of a story.

In my opinion, this is the best part of the book — Westerfield’s created a world where everyone has a say about everything, where the trivial is important, if you can get people to talk about it. (The second most famous person — Tally is first, even though she doesn’t live there — sends out feeds about what she eats and what she wears, and people all over buzz about it. It doesn’t matter that it’s totally trivial; she’s famous because people talk about her.) There’s elements of Facebook and Twitter in there — the popularity contest that is having hundreds or thousands (or millions) of followers hanging on your every twit (or whatever it’s called) or status update. It was simultaneously very enlightening and very disturbing.

However, the second half of the book veers back into sci-fi adventure territory. Aya discovers (accidentally) and kicks a story that could possibly mean the end of the world. Tally shows back up (with Shay, Fausto, and David) to use Aya (and her friends) to discover the sinister plot behind it all. And everything just gets weird. The ending is totally unsatisfying, as if Westerfield had too many ideas and just needed to end the book because it was getting too long. He abandoned the Sly Girls (which, I thought, were the most interesting part of the book), and the whole social commentary (mostly) in favor of bringing Tally back into the story (not that she was bad, it’s just that I really didn’t care for her by the end of Specials, and I’m not sure she entirely redeemed herself here).

That said, it’s a good book. Westerfield’s writing is the kind that gets under your skin: I found myself thinking in hyphens (wow, so mind-altering or that was crazy-making type of thing), like I remembered doing during the first three books. His world building is great, too. And most of the book is worth reading, so it wasn’t a total waste.