Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Uglies

I am currently in the process of going back and rereading many of the books that were favorites from my childhood, the books that I remember fondly but vaguely. Unfortunately, I've found that many of them just don't hold up. And Uglies is no exception.

What is there, really, to say about this book? It's enjoyable while you're reading it and utterly forgettable the second you're finished. It's really quite unremarkable. There are a few problems I have with it and I will get into those, but even those don't really rile me up the way worse books sometimes do. I just...don't care that much.

The main strength of this book is the plot and the pacing; it always keeps moving forward. After reading the rest of the review, it may surprise you to know that I plan to read the rest of the series, as long as it continues to be this enjoyable. I never felt like I was just waiting for something to happen. It was interesting and fun and I didn't want to put it down; I read it all in one day! The book does a good job of moving from point to point without lingering pointlessly. And that doesn't always mean something really big is happening, which is also good because that personally always takes me out of the story. But I was never bored while reading, and that deserves mentioning.

However, everything else is pretty weak. The characters, including our protagonist, are pretty flat. They do each have a semblance of a personality but not enough to make any of them feel like a fully realized person. The narrative, though well-paced, is predictable. After the first 1/3 of the book, it was pretty clear exactly where the overall arc of the story would lead. The one big "twist"

Spoiler

when Tally throws the necklace into the fire to destroy and then the big government baddies show up anyway

didn't surprise me at all and felt a little contrived.

Spoiler

Did she really think they wouldn't have a contingency for if it was destroyed? Why not just tell David's parents, "I was given this necklace to betray you but I don't want to so hey, you're scientists who know way more about this government than I do, please figure out how to best dispose of it"??

And now we get to, in my opinion, the book's biggest weakness. The best dystopias craft a world through with the author is able to levy their critiques on modern society. They take one aspect of society and drive it to the extreme, use it as a thought experiment to show what could happen if we aren't careful. Fahrenheit 451's world shows the deterioration of a society that's scared of knowledge. 1984 illustrates the quality (or lack thereof) of a life lived under surveillance. The Hunger Games' eponymous set piece exists primarily to condemn modern media's cavalier attitude towards violence and suffering. The best dystopias have something important to say, and everything in the book's world should exist to elevate those critiques, to make them clearer and harsher and more impactful.

Uglies doesn't have anything interesting to say. I believe the author thought he was saying something; the book's thesis seems to be something along the lines of "Being obsessed with appearance and status leads to a vapid, distracted, mindless society with little value." And that's a perfectly valid critique – if it were done well. But it's not.

In this world, the two sides of cause and effect (attractiveness -> vapidity) are not inextricably linked. The government decided to turn everyone stupid against their will, but they could just as easily just not do that and still make everyone pretty. There is no reason why things have to be this way, except because the government is evil. This is a huge weakness of the book. You can't change the Hunger Games to be less violent; you have to get rid of it entirely. The society in Handmaid's Tale can't just make the forced rape and enslavement of women less awful; you have to get rid of it. There's no way to make the surveillance in 1984 more palatable, less intrusive; you have to get rid of it. But there is a way to make the problem in Uglies go away easily; just stop doing that part of the surgery.

And so the book does nothing to reinforce the dangers of caring about appearance, because the primary evil in this world is not actually a result of prettiness at all! I was left wondering, why not just do the surgery without the evil part? I mean, it would be nice if everyone could just be equally pretty and no one felt bad about how they looked. If the only negative consequence of that is something that was invented and contrived and added in just because, then hell yeah let's do it!

And it's a damn shame, because there are a lot of real consequences to caring about appearances that actually matter and would've been actually impactful to highlight. In the hands of a better author, or maybe just a more passionate one who had a good personal reason to tell this story, this could've been a really interesting and eye-opening critique. I would love to read a thoughtful, thorough, insightful dystopia about how far society can fall when appearances matter above all else. Unfortunately, this book is not even close to that.

Content Warnings

madmantha's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It was really interesting rereading this in 2022; many things still feel relevant today, if not more so in some cases.

The love triangle still feels a bit forced; I’d love for them to take it in a queer or poly direction in the new series adaption.
I got heavy “gal pals” energy between Tally and Shay in this reading; which isn’t something I remember noticing or feeling when I read this years ago.

This is still one of my favorite books and I’m very much looking forward to continuing to share the series with my partner.

Content Warnings

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