#scott westerfield

[crow-caller]

The Uglies Trilogy, and its messy legacy

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While Uglies is a YA dystopia series with some interesting sci-fi ideas and cultural commentary, the books themselves are very sparse on anything but hoverboard action sequences in the wilderness. Each book in the trilogy winds up turning into a series of not particularly engaging action sequences rather than really developing the plot, characters, or story too much, so doing a normal plot summary doesn’t work as well for these books.

I was actually mixed on if I’d write anything up about these books at all, honestly. I enjoyed reading Uglies again with a heavy mix of nostalgia and adult appreciation for what is honestly more a morality play for teens with body dysmorphia. Book 2, Pretties, was disappointing but uninteresting. I wound up taking very few notes as I read. Book 3 though, Specials, was where I decided I had to say something. When we talk about the cultural impact of Uglies, I’m not sure there was one, but there was another kind of impact these books had on teens for sure. And that’s going to lead me right to a very strong content warning.

UGLIES features and glorifies- not fully intentionally- self-harm and cutting to a significant degree. I am going to talk about this a fair bit later on.

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[deanwax]

I guess deep in my heart I knew I'd live to see Netflix absolutely Fuck Up And Not Get Right a beloved childhood book series but I reeeeaaally wish it wasn't THAT one

[indigoswankster]

i have crawled out from my hole

i have crawled out from my decade long tumblr hole to post about my excitement. finally. FINALLY

UGLIES BY SCOTT WESTERFIELD IS GETTING A SERIES. HOW HAS THIS TAKEN SO LONG. WHY. WHY HAS THIS TAKEN SO LONG

I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS OH MY GOD IM SO FUCKIN HYPE FOR IT I LOGGED INTO THIS HELLSITE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN LIKE TEN FUCKIN YEARS

[jadempress]

Twilight renissance, hunger games renissance, uglies by scott westerfeld has a movie on netflix coming out this year. Nature is healing

[youngbloodmanifesto]

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.

[st-just]

So seeing as The City in the Middle of the Night is at this point very focused on pretty much the exact thing I find bizarrely stressful to read about (deep and meaningful personal relationships slowly falling apart as each party’s mental image of the other strays farther and farther from reality, to much denial and bad feeling). 

So, as per the anonymous recommendation from a month ago, giving Leviathan a try. And it’s, well, good popcorn? Went through 50 pages in something like 15 minutes. Then again, the large font size, small pages, and illustrations don’t exactly hurt with that. Anyway, thoughts-

-This is by the Uglies guy? Huh, I vaguely remember reading one of those back when I was volunteering at the library in high school.

-It’s been sufficiently long since I’ve read something that played the ‘girl pretending to be a boy to join the army’ thing straight that it’s actually kind of novel again, so that’s nice. Same with the good-hearted royal bastard desperate to prove himself (though that to a lesser degree). 

-Pre-emptively disappointed that WW1 seems to be the work of a nefarious conspiracy. 

-Very reminded of that mecha-stuffed wargame setting a friend of mine is admirably dedicated to. 

-I do really like the artwork, but also this map at the start of the book justified the whole thing

-That said, I can already tell that my reading’s been too high-minded recently. Or at least, that the mad science kaiju and mecha are very much just there to be cool and that any metaphorical social commentary is going to be really reaching. Which is a pity. I feel like you should always do you best to give some thematic resonance to how you distribute wacky bullshit in your setting 

[quotes-that-speak-to-me]

“Everyday seemed to change the mountain, the sky, and the surrounding valleys, making them spectacular in a completely new way. Nature, at least, didn't need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.”

-Scott Westerfield

Uglies

[tag-cat]

This week we’re featuring Leviathan by Scott Westerfield, the first novel in an alternative history steampunk and biopunk YA series about a Scottish girl who pretends to be a boy to join the British Air Service and fight in World War I. The novel also follows a fictional prince of Austria-Hungry.  

Leviathan plays with historical figures as characters, mechanized war machines, and living fabricated creatures. With a little bit of the LEGO Genetics trope and a whole lot of airship setting, this book is filled with adventure, fictional slang, and color illustrations. 

Leviathan is set in a war, and therefore contains battle scenes, and the protagonists are frequently in danger, but there is no graphic violence.