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Specials

ebook
4 of 5 copies available
4 of 5 copies available
The third installment of Scott Westerfeld's New York Times bestselling and award-winning Uglies series—a global phenomenon that started the dystopian trend.
Tally thought they were a rumor, but now she's one of them. A Special. A super-amped fighting machine, engineered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid.

But maybe being perfectly programmed with strength and focus isn't better than anything she's ever known. Tally still has memories of something else.

Still, it's easy to tune that out—until she's offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently. It all comes down to one last choice: listen to that tiny, faint heartbeat, or carry out the mission she's programmed to complete. Either way, Tally's world will never be the same.
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  • Reviews

    • School Library Journal

      July 1, 2006
      Gr 8 Up -This final installment in the series is a warning of the dangers of overconsumption and conformity. Set some time in the future, after a human-made bacteria destroyed the modern world, the trilogy tells of new cities established and tightly controlled through brainwashing and a series of operations leading to a compliant society. Tally Youngblood, the 16-year-old protagonist, learns in the first two books that free will and truth are more important than a false sense of security. In "Specials", she has become an elite fighting machine, fully enhanced with nanotechnology and super-fast reflexes, and made to work as a Special Circumstances agent for the nameless city that she fled. As in the first two books, much of the story takes place with characters whizzing through the air on hoverboards, but Tally and her friends are in for some harsh realities here. Readers who enjoyed "Uglies" and "Pretties" (both S & S, 2005) will not want to miss "Specials", but those who have not read those books will not understand much of what is happening. Westerfeld -s themes include vanity, environmental conservation, Utopian idealism, fascism, violence, and love. In this trilogy, the author calls for a revolution in our hearts and minds -think "The Matrix"." -Corinda J. Humphrey, Los Angeles Public Library"

      Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      May 15, 2006
      Gr. 7-10. After stints as a back-to-nature rebel (" Uglies, " 2004), and as a "bubbleheaded" specimen of physical perfection (" Pretties, " 2005)" ," 16-year-old Tally undergoes another dramatic reversal in this conclusion to Westerfeld's blockbuster trilogy. She now belongs to a turbocharged commando unit designed to quash resistance to the government's mass surgical (and neurosurgical) campaigns. Though at first a model Special, enamored of her "almost above human" status, several brushes with her past force her to question the price of her transformation as the stakes escalate. Some plot elements, especially Tally's gradual groping toward independent thought, may strike readers as rather similar to devices used in the preceding books, and the setup feels overcomplicated. But series fans will still relish this final visit to Westerfeld's dystopian world, in which details of the cultlike Specials, especially their imagination-grabbing gadgetry, inventively combine with the premise's winning themes: free will, self-image, and teen-powered subversion of authority. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)

    • The Horn Book

      July 1, 2011
      Westerfeld's unique dystopian "trilogy plus one" receives a full redesign (in hardcover, no less), from covers to trim size and page design, in an apparent attempt to market the books to a crossover audience.

      (Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Formats

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Languages

  • English

Levels

  • ATOS Level:6.1
  • Lexile® Measure:880
  • Interest Level:6-12(MG+)
  • Text Difficulty:4-5

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