Anyone else think the Impostors series had a slightly darker tone than Uglies? I feel like by the end of most of the books there was a feeling that things were getting back on track. Maybe they weren't happy, but a cure is in the works, or Tally and David are going to do the hard work needed to save the world. At the end of every Impostors book it feels like everything gets worse and Frey ends up in the hospital with radiation *again* and needs surgery. It almost doesn't feel worth reading.
I know Scott Westerfeld wrote Impostors in response to us politics, and when he saw how even a good system can go bad. But does that have to mean the tone is dreary? Maybe I'm just a sucker for a happy ending, but I don't like when we see characters left on a positive note, only for that all to be thrown away a decade later.
Maybe it's just because I looked up to Tally so much as a kid. I want to see her flourishing. I want to know it is possible to flourish. I don't want to see heroes need full body surgery because their cells are decaying from radiation. I want the hope that Uglies had.
Or maybe book 1 Tally was a tricky and naive teen, where Frey was raised by an abusive dictator. Perhaps Impostors was doomed to its gloom.