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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Extras - Scott Westerfeld

Special thanks to Lauren W. for loaning me her copy of the book so I could have a chance to read it because we haven't gotten it here yet. We will, though, never fear.

This is the EXTRA book in the series by Scott Westerfeld that was meant to be a trilogy, but fans clamored so loudly (or the publishers saw such a good chance to make a huge profit?) that he wrote a fourth book. It's set farther into the future and has a brand new character, Aya, which some fans will enjoy and others won't (aka Mrs. Van der Meer). Gaining social status is the big thing in this book, and people are so fickle you can basically be wildly popular one day and drop off the face of the planet the next. Aya is decidedly low in the popularity rankings, and she is determined to change that. The Sly-Girls clique is her road to fame.

In the process of "kicking" the story of the Sly Girls and their Mag-Lev flying, yep, lots of strange new words and gizmos in this book just like the other three, Aya discovers there may be more to life than just getting famous, but just in case there's not, she decides to go with the fame thing and turns the whole world upside down. Unfortunately, there are some other people (??) who aren't too happy with this choice of hers....

It's a suspenseful story with lots of action and excitement, even a visit from Tally Youngblood. If you liked the rest of the series, you should definitely read this, but I thought some of the language (sense-missing and the like) got a little annoying. For sure it's no Uglies.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I perosnally didn't like this addition as much as Specials, which is my favorite, but it was still just fine. I imagine there's another one to come in the future.

Anonymous said...

I didn't like this book much either. I felt there was nothing to really capture my interest. It was a perfectly fine book but I would have probably never read om from the first few paragraphs or so because it didn't pull me in. The only reason I kept reading on was the sole fact that it was a "extra" from the series.

Dee-En-Ay said...

I thought it was rather strained. All the talk about manga and the like, it got old fast. It was kind of like Mr. Westerfeld was trying too hard to fit this book into todays latest trends. I read very little of it before it became dull. I liked the other three books in the trilogy, but I felt that he should have probably kept it a trilogy...

Anonymous said...

i liked it muy mucho