Uglies

This is the beginning of one of the best trilogies I have ever read. Better even than The Hunger Games. This is the Uglies trilogy, and (duh) Uglies is the first book.

The first sentence was a good and funny eye-catching phrase: "The sunset sky was the colour of cat vomit." Unusual way to start a book (and series).

Uglies sets a scene that I found myself looking upon for the rest of the trilogy. (Oops . . . I shouldn't give anything away before I do those books, too!) The main character is a fifteen-year-old girl by the name of - *reverence* - Tally Youngblood. She lives in a futuristic world about 300 years after our generation, whom everyone calls the Rusties, because we wasted metal and messed up the planet almost beyond recognition (but someone released an oil-eating bacteria into the air, bringing a halt to our maddening rampage across the Earth). In Tally's world, everyone gets an operation at 16 years old that makes you supermodel gorgeous: every bone in perfect shape, strong muscles, face perfectly in proportion, eyes big and vulnerable, lips full, body slim, perfect eyesight and teeth made of the stuff they use to build airplanes. Anyone normal, anyone with a natural-born face, anyone under 16 - in other words, without the Barbie doll beauty of the operation - is considered ugly.

I couldn't make myself stop reading, especially the first time when everything that happened made you want to know what would happen next. The beginning phrase led you to Tally's sneaking across a river into the closely-watched New Pretty Town, where uglies were banned and new pretties lived (which, alone, had me drinking up the covert secrecy). Then, Tally learns to hoverboard (I found myself wishing I were in her generation just for being able to fly). After, she meets cruel pretties known as Special Circumstances: beautiful, but in a predatory way, with the dangerous grace of a wolf or hawk that calls up humanity's most ancient and instinctive fears.

Who could stop reading after that? It's one net after another, and when the book ends on a cliffhanger, you know the story's not over yet, but a whole new book begins. You just keep on reading, getting happily twisted into Scott Westerfeld's web of Tally's generation.

P.S. Bonus points for the font the book was written in.