Wired

The Skinned series is an amazing twist of robotics, revolution, and the meaning of self. Robin Wasserman wrote the Chasing Yesterday series along with the Seven Deadly Sins series, but she out did herself here. Lia Kahn is a normal spoiled teenage princess, not so much the teenage princesses we see on MTV today, but of the future. Her parents paid big bucks for her and her sister's genetics. They are blonde, tall, athletic, blue eyed perfect girls. Of course genetics can't control personality which is why Lia is the perfect one and her younger sister Zo is the greasy haired juvenile delinquent. The entire scope of Lia's life changes when Zo begs her to take a job instead of her. Lia uses Zo's car card to start the car at night and heads toward the job, then her car crashes killing her. But this is not the end of Lia, though perhaps in a way it is. Her father works at BioMax and right now they scan the brains of people and download them in to a bionic body. Perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect hair, her personality... but is it her or a copy of her? Or a copy of a copy of Lia? Skinned is Lia's entrance into the Mech life. She attempts to go back to high school and be normal. Crashed is Lia accepting she's no longer Lia-before and is a new entity entirely. Crashed is her built up Mech world with Riley, Quinn, Ani and Jude falling to pieces like ash from the sky. Wired is Lia's attempt at re-building, this time under BioMax's orders.Lia believes that she is doing the right thing, vid-lifeing and showing people that Skinners/Mechs are the same as everyone else, they party, they have friends, they're no danger to anyone. Turns out her life again is about to go upside down. Rileys' ex girl friend is crashing at his house, it's not the ex part that has Lia concerned, it's who her loyalties lie with. On top of that Jude is back with a plan to save their people, this time Lia thinks he might actually have a point. Especially when Zo and Lia break into BioMax and find out what the truth is.... unfortunately it's only a small part of the truth, no matter how scary and horrid that part is, there's still much more.Wired is the Mech's ultimate stand up, and it doesn't happen like a big battle Orgs on one side Mechs on the other, no this battle is more sinister, involving the Brotherhood, viruses, and revolution. The ending... how I wish I could tell you how it ends, then you would be able to understand my frustration. It can't end like that! I want to see what Lia does, is this new life even better than her life as a Mech? Does Zo ever go back home? What's up with their mother (timid mouse turned crazed general)? And what about Riley and Jude? The ending is perfect in the way that I can see Lia doing more good, being more 'evolved', but I need to see the rest, there has to be another book! One can only hope that like the Uglies Trilogy we get an 'extra'. Fantastic author!

Bought this book for my daughter. She read the first of the series at school and wanted the remaining books. She loves the series.

Read all of them! I teach and love reading and recommending to students. Books like this are great for getting discussions going about the future, technology, and what government should and should not get into.

Great story, this is an awesome series and the narrator is fantastic.

There was too much angst and characters fighting. Just way too much. And yes, the ending was poor. It was like Scott Westerfeld (and I am referring to books other than the Uglies series). It worked for Westerfeld, but not Wasserman. This just seemed very much like trying to make a happy ending for everyone, but then Lia seems to be acting slightly out-of-character.Lia's been working as a spokesperson for the mechs, to try and convince orgs that the machines are people, too. This includes a two-week stint in a reality TV show, except that the audience decides what she does. (Question: Who decides? The masses will have so many different ideas about where she could go, so who actually has the voice that matters?). During that time, she runs into Jude and it soon becomes apparent that Riley was off, doing his own stuff, which means more fights between him and Lia. He met up with Sari (yes, *that* Sari) and she is now living with him. Lia ends up having problems with her father and finds out some very shocking things about her death and becoming a mech. She and Zo run away and also end up living with Riley. Jude, of course, gets back in the picture. He has his own agenda (which was hinted at in Crashed), but it soon becomes apparent that BioMax has their own evil plans. And now whenever a mech tries to upload their memories onto the backup file, they die. The file gets erased, too, which actually means total death. Guess who is going to try and stop both it and BioMax?Sounds wild, doesn't it? Basically, it's Lia/Zo vs. Dad and Lia/Riley/Jude vs. BioMax. There are some encounters with old friends, like Auden, and some people end up becoming randomly helpful to Lia, which is very out-of-character. Some of these people seemed very boring, one-dimensional, almost filler characters that just end up getting washed away under the rest of the cast.I enjoyed some of the parts with Jude- the relationship between him and Lia is changing and they seem almost friendly at times. It almost comes across as flirtatious. Of course, Lia seems bent on fighting with everyone around her, which kind of cancels it all out. (A random but real scene: Jude and Lia on a bed hiding under a blanket. Together.)It seemed to be nice that Lia and Zo were able to come together as sisters. Of course, it seemed like they didn't get along very well when Lia was human, so they do have some typical arguaments and sibling rivalry. Zo now always seems there for Lia, and it's great that she's there, but it's a little weird. Too overdone.There weren't anywhere near as many talks about the post-apocalyptic world as there were in the other two books. Aside from mentioning a city with too much radiation and how only jellyfish and algae live underwater now, there is very little. It's like Wasserman gave up on creating this world and making it unique. What else has the radiation done to transform our world into Lia's?The morals of the other two books could have really been taken to a whole new level, but unfortunately they were almost passed over. It's taken a step up on personal morals, identity, artificial identity, et cetera. I remember a part in Skinned where Lia lost her old zone or account or whatever because she "was no longer a person." Basically, BioMax does something along the same lines and goes against the contract with clients with similar reasoning. Morals about life and death are also questioned here, especially when Lia and the mechs find themself almost as mortal as orgs. I also liked the parts with Riley having died and not remembering his actions during the fateful scene in Crashed, because it makes you think about something that you wouldn't normally think about. It must be very disconcerting. You don't remember a part of your life, and as it turns out you did something that you don't think you normally would do, especially since Riley and Lia are mechs and will eventually face that again.The ending. One of those stupid endings where everything manages to turn out fine, even though it really shouldn't and the odds of it happening are almost zero. Everything comes out all right, it seems. There is a somewhat shocking death, both because of the character and how/why they die, but it's not that much of a loss, it seems. Even though it is a good ending where everyone dies, Lia ends up giving up some things that would seem very precious.

I loved this final instalment right up to the last two pages. It was emotional and thought provoking. The ending was a let down however. It felt like the author had reached their word limit and just rushed an end to the story. I still would recommend this series to others .

Great followup

Loved it! One of my new favorite book series out there.sehr zu empfehlen! sehr guter und interessanter Schreibstil, super Charaktere, was will man mehr :)