Extras by Scott Westerfeld (Uglies, Bk 4) - 3.5* (round to 3*)

[Doughgirl5562]

This is the real last book in the Uglies series - but it read like a book that has just been tacked on to the series - not really a finale. The book takes place several years after Specials and moves the action from the USA to Japan with a whole new group of characters. This time our heroine is young Aya Fuse - whose best friend is a robotic hover camera and whose main goal is to become a Kicker (basically a cross between a reporter and a blogger) like her big brother and increase her Face Rank (i.e. how famous she is). She happens across a really big story, and when that story breaks the group from the previous books (Tally Youngblood and the rest of the Specials) join her to find out the real truth.

Although the characters are different, this new culture was very interesting. The idea of every single person having a Face Rank - or a rank of how famous they are - seems to be very timely (and also plays into the Asian concept of "saving face"). In this culture, your Face Rank was your currency. The author did a better job of character development in this book IMO. Even the robot hover cam had a personality :-)

But when the older characters entered the storyline, it started to go off the rails for me. The storyline just didn't make that much sense from that point - although it might to a teenager (the target audience). And I still didn't like Tally and her friends very much. As in the previous book, the ending just fell a little flat and anticlimactic.

For those who have read this entire series, I have a question in the spoiler link below:

(view spoiler)[So one thing I have wanted to know from the time that the brain "lesions" were revealed in the Pretties was who put them there. They told us why. It basically controlled the population and controlled their thinking. Where did that big idea come from? All along I thought that one of the reasons that ALL of the books were tagged Extraterrestrials was because there were ET's controlling the population from behind the scenes a la The Twilight Zone. The when the ETs showed up - they had nothing to do with it! In fact it was NEVER explained. Did I miss something?" (hide spoiler)]