Ubalblog

[  Mood: Cool ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]

Aya is a fifteen year-old girl who is desperate to be famous. It is several years after the mind-rain, when Tally Youngblood freed the world from "Prettytime". Each city appears to have gone on its own way. Aya’s city (most likely Tokyo) has switched to a merit based economy. Most people do good works to get credits. So you do your homework, you earn five credits. But you can also earn credits based on your face-rank, in other words how famous you are. The more famous your are, thebigger your house, the more gadgets you can own, you get the idea. Think of it as our reality TV world gone amuck.

The city is made up of cliques. Our heroine Aya wants to be a famous kicker, like her brother. Kickers are reporters, so she must break a big story. What Aya doesn’t realize that in doing so, she will betray friends, meet the most famous person in the world and uncover something far bigger than she could ever imagine.

While not as good as the first three books of the Uglies series, Extras is still a masterpiece of world building. Author Scott Westerfield has taken our fame obssesed society and taken it to the nth degree. And that makes it engaging. This is a good read for adults and teens and will be appearing in an upcoming After Harry.