Extras

This is the fourth and final book in the Uglies quartet. This one takes place three years after the Mind Rain. Pretties are no longer getting the surgery that makes them complacent and people are able to make their own choices again. The cities are expanding and people now have to earn credits to get the things that used to be provided.Fifteen year old Aya Fuse wants to be a Kicker like her older brother. She and her hovercam Moggle are looking for a big story to kick in order to boost her face rank and make her famous. But what she stumbles upon is bigger than anything she could have anticipated. This book was written in 2007, but it is really on point for today with influencers and everyone recording everything and then posting it online.This book was interesting. In the first three books there was peace on earth. No crime, no war, no resources being exploited. But as soon as humans got their brains back, we started destroying things again. I wish I could say I thought better of humanity, but there is something to what he's saying....

Great for my teenager, she loved the series and was so excited to get this one!

If you ADORE strange and exciting Dystopian worlds and deep and interesting characters, then you will LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this series!!!:-). Soooo much action and adventure and ideas that will make your head spin in the BEST of ways!!:-). LOVED IT!!:-)

This, the fourth book in the Uglies trilogy, is in some ways better than the original series, as it provides a fresh viewpoint and new characters to look at the Pretties world after Tally Youngblood's radical revolution.Aya is a 15 year old in a Japanese city, a city which has re-organized its economy around the idea of fame, or face-rank as called here. As a near faceless extra, with a face rank down in the 400,000's, Aya is driven to find a news story that will propel her to fame as one of the best `kickers' (equivalent to an investigative journalist) around. Accidentally observing a shadowy clique known as the Sly Girls, who for reasons of their own actively avoid fame, doing something both dangerous and fun, she decides that doing a story about this group will be a decidedly great way to help her in her quest to become something other than a nonentity. But the story of the Sly Girls leads her to a much larger story, one with potentially deadly consequences for the entire world, and one which will eventually attract the attention of the person with the #1 face-rank, Tally Youngblood, while at the same time involve Aya in the moral and ethical quandaries that journalism sometimes leads to.The plot line is good, leading to some very unexpected corners of the world, and Aya is well drawn. The new society portrayed here makes an interesting contrast to that of the mind-hobbled Pretties, as without those mental limitations this new world shows a vibrancy of many different people heading off in all directions, from tech geek-hood to obsessive gossip-generating stunts. There's even some sly satire about things like how some people try to improve their Google rank today with a group in Aya's world who try to artificially boost someone's face rank by mentioned that person's name again and again.The above is all good, but I found a few things that nagged. There are some technical bobbles, which are difficult to detail without giving away the plot, but I'll give one example. When you accelerate a multi-ton piece of steel to orbital escape velocity in an air-evacuated tunnel, then launch it up into the air, the result will be a very loud bang, hearable for miles around, and this thunder will continue following the projectile for a very long way. This is not good if you are trying to conceal the launch of such a projectile, especially if you are launching hundreds of these objects. There are some plausibility issues with the methods and aims of what turns out to be the `villain' of this story. And once again, as with the original Pretties world, I found that the economic underpinnings of the portrayed society to be too skimpily described and worked-out to make me fully believe in it. These are quibbles, and many readers probably won't notice them amongst the fast action and all the new surprises this book has.A good follow-up to the original series, with some fresh and original ideas and characters, well worth reading for those who read the first three books.--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

I loved this series, but this last book I honestly could have done without and I usually never say that about a series I love. It was just.. weird. and if you love the characters in the first three books, they are not the main story.

I loved this book as much as the last three in the series. (By the way, in Scott's words, "it's Uglies people, not THE Uglies")Anyway, a lot of people don't really like this book because it was from Aya's view, not Tally's. And a lot of people just hate Aya in general. And then there are the people that don't like it because they don't think it's part of the series, so they refuse to read it.Let me bring up a few points:"People that don't think it's part of the series, so they refuse to read it..."I've met a lot of people like this, actually. They think since it takes place years after, it's not an actual part of the series.However, some of them also are the ones that wanted more books in the Uglies series. So that's what Scott gave to them. Because he was thinking of his fans."It's from Aya's view, not Tally's!"Have you read Twilight? Well if you have, I would think you might also have read the one from Edward's view (I forgot what it was called). So therefor, I don't really see the problem.Anyway, I don't think it was that big a deal. We got somebody else's point of view on the story, got to see what life was like through somebody else's eyes, and that's not a bad thing.Scott was just trying to experiment with somebody else for once, plus it's not like Tally's out of the book completely."Aya was a because she was obsessed with fame!"In a world like this book, who ISN'T obsessed with fame? They're trying to get higher in ranks, trying to do the right things, trying to get the latest trends and stuff like that.Think about it this way:When we were young, most of us wanted to be like the kids on TV. We wanted to wear stuff that would impress people, do dances that would impress people, and do stuff in general that would impress people. At least, that's what I was like when I was young.But I learned my lesson, and so did Aya. In the end, she did the right thing for everybody. So, all in all, this book was great, despite what some people say about it. Five stars!P.S. I once heard that Scott is thinking about a possible fifth book in the series. :D

I wasn't quite sure what this was going to be about when I first picked it up,if it was going to have any of the same characters as Uglies or not but...Aya Fuse's city, located somewhere in Japan, has dealt with the problems caused by everyone becoming a non-bubblehead and demanding far more resources than the city can really afford by introducing the "reputation economy". This means the more times your name is spoken, the more resources you're allcoated and it has left almost the whole city fame obsessed. Aya's older brother Hiro, who is a similar age to Tally from the other books, made himself famous by reporting other people's stories almost immediately and in Aya's opinion has become a stuck up snob with no time for anyone but him. Her goal is also to become famous by "kicking" others stories and her plan for doing this is to integrate herself with the "Sly Girls", a clique who hate fame and try to avoid notice and so that she can secretly post their story to the whole world.For a while the book is similar to Uglies, as Aya grows to like the Sly Girls and feels guilty for betraying them. However this is NOT Uglies and whilst Aya and the Sly Girls surf along the roof of a train and spot something very, very odd, the story takes a turn in another direction.Basically, although Extras, like the other three books, is in three parts, it can really be divided in half, based on when Tally Youngblood comes into it, because after that it gets quite different. For a start, although Aya remains the point of view character, the emphasis really switches to Tally. At first it was odd seeing her through another character's eyes, but you quickly get used to it(Tally promises to help Aya and Aya trusts her, but is she making a mistake...?) and of course some of the ambigiousness of the ending to Specials in terms of Tally's relationships with Shay and David(who also make appearances) is resolved.I think one of the best things about this series is that Tally and Aya aren't exactly...good. A lot of the time they tread a very fine line between being the heroine of the book and being something resembling the villain. And they plenty of the time do selfish or nasty things, which makes a contrast to other, more idealised, heroines of books. And most of the other characters are just as ambigious. Usually it annoys me when reviews say books have a lot of twists and turns, but this one really does. And I think most of us can far more easily relate to Aya's fame obsessed world than we could to Tally's beauty obsessed one in the earlier books.This is a book, like the rest of the series, about frienship and betrayal, specialness and ordinariness, right and wrong and most of all truth and lies and the narrow gap between them. But Extras is also about fame and anonymity. Enjoy.

After reading Uglies, Pretties and Specials, I read this book, which is the fourth in the Uglies series. Initially I was put off by it; the story is set in a completely different place, with a completely different protagonist. However, this soon changed and after the first chapters, it becomes clear how Extras links back to the previous books. This book follows on from Specials and the fact that it is set in Japan, rather than the USA, emphasizes how big an effect the events of Specials had on the world.In this book, the major themes are fame and journalism, but also humanity, like the previous novels. It looks in detail at how fame happens, the negative consequences of it, the jour nalists who make the fame happen and the way a story can be told and interpreted in different ways.In my opinion, the characters are deeper and more complex than the first three books. I find the protagonist, 15year old Aya Fuse, very relatable and she is a representation of all the 'fame wannabees' out there and a metaphor of the consequences of twisting a story. She is strongly written throughout the book. Her tendancy to lie to find out what she wants is contrasted by another character with a form of brain surgery that makes him tell the truth, no matter how much he doesn't want to. The effect this has is almost comical sometimes. We meet lots of new charcters and also some old ones return.Overall, the plot is exciting and memorable although it is a little unoriginal at times. This is a very minor issue though. The narrative takes some big twists and turns until it arrives at an unexpected (for me, anyway) ending. There is a lot less calling something bogus than in Pretties and Specials, which is a relief!It is well written and a fantastic read for those who like YA dystopian thrillers. I am thirteen and I love this book, and I am sure that adults would like this too. The whole series is great if you like the action of The Hunger Games, the (sinister) themes and messages of His Dark Materials, and the kick-ass female leads of Graceling.I think that if you haven't read Uglies, Pretties and Specials, you could read this, but you would find it much easier to have an idea of Tally's personality to understand why Aya judges her wrong, and to know what the Manifesto was, as this set the Extras ball rolling.Dnjoy!

I found out that this book is......on the same wavelength as the "Hunger games" books. The action is good and the characters from the other three books are there.....so........yeah.........umm......but it is ( "is" in italics) better than Suzanne "I never heard of battle royal" Collins - Hunger Games

Nor favourite of the series, but an enjoyable read. Took me time to warm to it but have now read it twice and probably enjoyed it more the second time round.

What more could Scott do with the trilogy that was so terrific? Bring in new characters, new ideas and brilliant new twists that's what. This book is fantastic for anyone who read and loved the three books previous to this and even for people who haven't read Uglies, Pretties or Specials. Terrific book.