Age: 7th-10th grade
4 stars for action, world-building, writing style, plot
2 stars for characterization, plot

I'll be reviewing the series as a whole because I feel like the action and writing was pretty consistent throughout the series.

Tally Youngblood was slated to enter New Pretty Town just the same as all sixteen-year-olds, where she could live a carefree, fun-filled life. The best part of it? She would no longer have to be ugly. In this distopian world, society has been tamed and perceivably perfected. Formed to avoid mistakes of the past, Tally's society believes they have eliminated past discrimination based on appearance by surgically altering everyone to the same beautified standards. Without this discrimination, there are no reasons to fight and no reasons for war.

When Tally's friend, Shay runs away to a rebellion camp outside the city, Tally is forced to find her friend and reveal the camp's whereabouts. Here, Tally finds out the real reason for passive contentment: tiny lesions fitted on the brain, without consent, that prohibit free-thought and malcontent while encouraging placidness and conformity.

The series has a continuous battle with freedom of speech while condoning the actions of the past (or current era). Perhaps this is where my biggest confusion with the novels exists. The distopian world is not exaggerated in its ineffectiveness but in its *effectiveness.* Fighting does not exist. Discrimination does not exist. Happiness is rampant. The environment is not torn asunder. But freedom and creative expression are also nonexistent. And when these are reintroduced, society leads its course back to total annihilation. Which one is better?

I suppose in the end we are supposed to cheer for our protagonist, Tally, for rewiring her brain without outside aid, only sheer willpower. But her character is constantly manipulated and constantly reworked that its hard to distinguish what are her true emotions. Who are we rooting for?


Further Synopsis: After a cure is found for the lesions, Tally offers herself up to be turned Pretty (end of book 1), then reluctantly tests the cure with her boyfriend, Zane, based on their desire for mental clarity. With a new perspective on the world, they soon escape only to find that Zane took the active, brain eating pill that could only have been stopped with the pill Tally took. They are captured and Tally is turned into a Special, a human who is physically and mentally converted into a killing machine (end of book 2). Tally is physically revolted by Zane's unspecialness and needs him to be converted into a Special. Zane must prove he is mentally agile enough to become a Special, so Tally and Shay (part of an ultra-Special team called Cutters) help him escape to go find the new rebel camp. The Cutters discover that the rebel camp is another city which is soon attacked by Tally's long-suspecting city. In the attack Zane is killed and Tally must put an end to the warfare. She travels back to her hometown and injects the Special leader with a cure for her aggressive alterations. After having rewired her brain again, Tally decides that city life is not for her and she remains a symbolic barrier for future generations to not breach beyond their limits into the wild.