A review by raemelle
Extras, by Scott Westerfeld
4.0
Fun read. Loved the characters. I like that they aren't the trite, perfect heroes always portrayed in books. Aya is a real teenaged girl with superficial desires. She's 15 for crying out loud. She's kind, but a bit self absorbed and self serving. It takes a majority of the book - pretty much all of it - for her to stop thinking in terms of reputation points and more about what is actually good for the world. But that's real! I think people like to pretend that they would be braver and less selfish than they would really be in situations like this - so they're disappointed when they see a character that reflects a more realistic teenaged personality.
Loved the setting in Japan, though I wish there had been more location specific detail.
The fact that this was published nearly ten years ago is pretty impressive. Granted, social media existed in 2007, but it wasn't nearly as big in our lives as it is now. It's like the author predicted how completely nut job crazy we've gone for sharing every boring, minute detail of our lives to the rest of the world. Gaining followers is very similar to the Japan in Extras world where Face Rank is so important to people. I can absolutely see this evolution of social media coming to real life.
The frustrating thing that I noticed in the other books as well as this one is a lack of complete detail about scenes and actions and settings. I mean, I know he wrote a whole companion book to explain some of the futuristic things in the novels, but I feel like they should have been able to stand on their own a bit better. I found it annoying when a certain device (like the sneak suits) wasn't really described in introduction. I could obviously eventually gather from context that certain aspects of the suit existed (like a face covering hood), but it wasn't until midway through the second book that used them that it was actually described as a characteristic of the suit. Or in certain actions, a tiny detail is left out, but that tiny detail means a connection between a character or object starting in one situation and ending in another. I had to go back a lot and see if I'd skipped something when I wondered how an item or status was suddenly moved from point A to point B.
(I'd also like to know why the Japanese people used traditional suffix honorifics, but don't refer to people with their surnames first.)
And the visuals were sometimes lacking. Ruins and traditional buildings. In Singapore and Japan. Places with much more lasting architectural history than America. No real descriptions to give us clues as to whether these ruins are from our time or before our time. I just feel like I was walking around a bit blindly through this story's world sometimes. Limited descriptions of scenery sometimes. Not my ideal.
But I still really enjoyed these books as they evolved. I'd recommend them for sure. Noting that it is worth reading past the first, slightly less impressive, installment. The author really seemed to get his stride by the second book. Uglies was like a lukewarm warm up.
Loved the setting in Japan, though I wish there had been more location specific detail.
The fact that this was published nearly ten years ago is pretty impressive. Granted, social media existed in 2007, but it wasn't nearly as big in our lives as it is now. It's like the author predicted how completely nut job crazy we've gone for sharing every boring, minute detail of our lives to the rest of the world. Gaining followers is very similar to the Japan in Extras world where Face Rank is so important to people. I can absolutely see this evolution of social media coming to real life.
The frustrating thing that I noticed in the other books as well as this one is a lack of complete detail about scenes and actions and settings. I mean, I know he wrote a whole companion book to explain some of the futuristic things in the novels, but I feel like they should have been able to stand on their own a bit better. I found it annoying when a certain device (like the sneak suits) wasn't really described in introduction. I could obviously eventually gather from context that certain aspects of the suit existed (like a face covering hood), but it wasn't until midway through the second book that used them that it was actually described as a characteristic of the suit. Or in certain actions, a tiny detail is left out, but that tiny detail means a connection between a character or object starting in one situation and ending in another. I had to go back a lot and see if I'd skipped something when I wondered how an item or status was suddenly moved from point A to point B.
(I'd also like to know why the Japanese people used traditional suffix honorifics, but don't refer to people with their surnames first.)
And the visuals were sometimes lacking. Ruins and traditional buildings. In Singapore and Japan. Places with much more lasting architectural history than America. No real descriptions to give us clues as to whether these ruins are from our time or before our time. I just feel like I was walking around a bit blindly through this story's world sometimes. Limited descriptions of scenery sometimes. Not my ideal.
But I still really enjoyed these books as they evolved. I'd recommend them for sure. Noting that it is worth reading past the first, slightly less impressive, installment. The author really seemed to get his stride by the second book. Uglies was like a lukewarm warm up.