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Specials
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Uglies: Book 3

Specials (2006) (edit title/settings)

by Scott Westerfeld (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

"Special Circumstances": The words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a repellent, rebellious ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumor --frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, and breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting... read more

Summary edit see section history

The third novel in the Uglies series begins two months after events in Pretties, when Tally Youngblood has become a member of an elite group of "Specials" - surgically enhanced super-humans - called the Cutters. The Cutters were originally founded by Shay, who invented the use of ritual... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

The third novel in the Uglies series begins two months after events in Pretties, when Tally Youngblood has become a member of an elite group of "Specials" - surgically enhanced super-humans - called the Cutters. The Cutters were originally founded by Shay, who invented the use of ritual self-harm to become "bubbly" and clear-headed in spite of brain lesions used to make her pretty-minded. The Cutters are a group of Specials that inflict self harm to become icy and clear headed. They were adopted into Special Circumstances and given enhanced senses, strength and reflexes, and are among the youngest agents working for Dr Cable.

The Cutters disguise themselves as Uglies in order to crash a party in Uglytown and search for members of the New Smoke. Tally successfully finds a girl giving out pills which cure the pretty lesions, which she encourages the Uglies to take to the Crims - Tally and Shay's old clique. The Cutters attempt to capture the girl, but she escapes on a hoverboard with David's help. Giving chase, the Cutters are ambushed by Smokies with unusually advanced technology, including infra-red masking sneak suits and electrical weapons. The Smokies kidnap Fausto, one of the Cutters, and leave Shay and Tachs injured.

Hearing that the pills are intended for Zane, Tally insists on going to see her boyfriend, who suffered brain damage in Pretties and has been hospitalized since Tally turned Special. Tally discovers that while Zane is still free of the pretty lesions, his brain damage preventing them from working effectively, his physical infirmity now disgusts her. She begins to wonder if she received a brain operations when being made Special which has given her feelings of superiority.

Eager to show Dr Cable Zane is healed so that he will be made Special, Tally, helped by a reluctant Shay, breaks into the city armory to steal something to cut off Zane's tracking necklace. They succeed, but in the attempt they accidentally destroy much of the armory, putting the city on high alert. They then begin to secretly track Zane and the Crims as they journey to the New Smoke, although the pair split up when Tally receives a guide to the New Smoke from her friend Andrew Simpson Smith, an escapee from a reservation of primitive culture. Shay follows the guide straight to the Smoke, but Tally insists on staying with Zane.

On the journey, Zane notices Tally and confronts her about her reasons for following him. The pair kiss, but Tally is still repulsed by Zane's tremors and runs away from him. Tally continues to follow the group to the New Smoke - a city called Diego, which accepts runaways freely, having widely adopted the pretty cure and rejected the rules about surgery, allowing anyone to look how they please rather than following the international standard. Tally is amazed by this, but horrified to hear that Diego is beginning to expand into the wild, clear-cutting forest like the Rusties did.

Tally finds Fausto at a party for newly arrived runaways, but realizes his Special brain surgery has been cured and only just escapes being forcibly injected. Her escape attempt leaves her helpless, and she is picked up by Diego's authorities and locked up for her lethal strength and weapon-sharp teeth and fingernails, which they insist on removing. The doctors inform her that she has received brain surgery to give her flashes of anger and euphoria, along with feelings of superiority, although they will not change this without her consent. With Shay's help, Tally escapes just before the surgery begins.

Shay and the other Cutters have all been cured by Fausto, but they want Tally's help to protect Diego from imminent attack by Dr Cable, who is blaming the so-called New System for the attack on the armory. Tally assists in the evacuation of the hospital, but learns after the attack that Zane, having just received surgery to cure his tremors, died of complications during the confusion of the attack. Grief stricken and feeling guilty, Tally leaves immediately to tell Dr Cable the truth about the attack on the armory. Just before she reaches the city, she meets David, who took a helicopter to talk to her in time. He tells her that he still believes she can think her own way out of her brain surgery, but gives her an injector full of the cure so that she has the option of curing herself.

Arriving at Special Circumstances headquarters, Tally finds Dr Cable and the Specials have taken control of the city. Dr Cable knows that Tally was responsible for the attack, but has chosen to use the attack as a way to seize control of both this city and Diego. Tally tricks Dr Cable into stabbing herself on the injector, and is imprisoned underground for a month, watching the feeds as Dr Cable slowly looses her grip on the city and the cure begins to spread. Diego publishes scans of Tally's Special body and the world is outraged by Dr Cable's "secret" experiments on non-consenting teenagers.

Eventually, Tally is taken as the last remaining Special to be turned normal again, but she resists the surgeons and with Dr Cable's help breaks out, becoming the only free Special in existence. She returns to David, still waiting at the Rusty Ruins, and realizes that her other friends have all found their places in the New System. She decides that she wishes to remain in the wild, free from surgery, and with David she will form the "New Special Circumstances", ensuring that nature is protected from mankind's excesses.

Characters edit see section history

  • Tally Younglood: The main protagonist throughout the trilogy. Tally was born an Ugly, then willingly turned Pretty in order to test Maddy's cure. She was made into a Special again against her will by Dr. Cable and Shay. This book tells of her life after becoming part of the Special Circumstances, and the new person she has become.
  • Shay and Tally: In the first book, Shay and Tally become friends, before Tally steals her boyfriend, David, and betrays her and her group of friends. This caused them to all be turned into Pretties. Later in the series, Shay becomes the leader of an individual group of Specials called Cutters.
  • Andrew Simpson Smith: A holy man from an experimental villiage.
  • Shay Fausto: One of the Cutters
  • Ho and Tachs: Two high-ranking members of the Cutters.
  • Az: Az is David's father who died in the first book. He is still mentioned, because Maddy (David's Mom) blames Tally for his death.
  • Maddy: David's plump mother who came up with the cure for the lesions
  • Dr. Cable: Dr. Cable is the head of Special Circumstances, and developer of the Cutters.
  • Zane: Zane is Tally's "true love"
  • Peris: Tally's old best friend from her Ugly days. After he became Pretty, they sort of lost touch. A Crim who likes being a bubblehead.
  • David: David was born and raised in the wild and plans to stay an Ugly his whole life. As Uglies, Tally and David were in love but after she became Pretty they lost touch
  • Boss: Add a description of this character.
  • Hiro
  • Moggle
  • Alek
  • Aya
  • Ho
  • Tally Youngblood
  • Maxamilla Feaster
  • Young Blood
  • Count Volger
Show all 21 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “It doesn’t take much convincing to make someone believe they’re better than everyone else.”
    Tally
  • “Be careful with the world, or next time we meet, it might get ugly.”
    Tally
  • “You're not alone.”
    David
  • “From now on no one rewires me but me.”
    Tally
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • It doesn’t take much convincing to make someone believe they’re better than everyone else.”
    Highlighted by 59 Kindle customers
  • It didn’t matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself.
    Highlighted by 52 Kindle customers
  • I don’t need to be cured. Just like I don’t need to cut myself to feel, or think. From now on, no one rewires my mind but me.
    Highlighted by 39 Kindle customers
  • society was left roiling in a constant battle of words, images, and ideas.
    Highlighted by 39 Kindle customers
  • When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, There arises the recognition of ugliness. When they all know the good as good, There arises the recognition of evil. —Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching
    Highlighted by 38 Kindle customers
  • She carried a knife inside herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.
    Highlighted by 38 Kindle customers
  • You existed to make sure everyone else behaved, but that didn’t mean you had to.
    Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers
  • One faces the future with one’s past. —Pearl S. Buck
    Highlighted by 28 Kindle customers
  • By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower. —Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds”
    Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers
  • She breathed in the forest, tendrils of pine coating her throat and tongue, thick as syrup.
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
Show all 14 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

  • Special Circumstances: A division that handles "special circumstances," which is basically any situation involving people who don't follow the government and are thinking for themselves.
  • New Pretty Town: A part of Tally's home city where new bubbleheads (Pretties) live where their only purpose is to have fun.
  • Diego: A city that helps out the Smoke
  • The Smoke: A town made up of city runaways. Destroyed in the first book, the New Smoke lives on.

Organizations edit see section history

  • Cutters: The Cutters are a group of Specials that cut themselves to make the world clearer.

First Sentence edit see section history

"The six hoverboards slipped among the trees with the lightning grace of playing cards thrown flat and spinning."

Table of Contents edit see section history

I Part One Being Special
1. Crashing A Bash
2. Hunters And Prey
3. Rescue
4. The Promise
5. New Pretty Town
6. Zane-LA
7. The Cut
8. The Armory
9. Break Out
10. Flight

II Part Two Tracking Zane
11. Cut Free
12. Outside
13. Barbarian
14. Split
15. Incompetence
16. Invisible
17. Bones
18. New Arrivals
19. Pursuit
20. Hard Landing
21. Random Town
22. Reunion
23. Violation of Morphology
24. Voices
25. Light

III Part Three Unmaking War
26. Payback
27. Blame
28. Patient
29. Going Home
30. David
31. Emergency Meeting
32. Confession
33. Crumbling
34. Operation
35. Tears
36. Ruins
37. The Plan
38. Manifesto

Glossary edit see section history

  • Specials: A secret police force of sorts, highly advanced super-humans, who are basically indestructible people, with strength and agility beyond wildest belief. They run the city, and intervene only in the instance of a Special Circumstance. It was their idea to start the Pretty-head operation, to keep people from killing the wilderness, and starting wars. Unfortunately, the price of that was to take away people's ability to think freely.
  • Randoms: Uglies, those whose appearance is "random" because of genes and is no one to worry about because they're random, and Specials are special.
  • skintenna: An antenna woven into a person's skin.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Choice and Free Will: In the book, the protagonist Tally has to choose from what the society expects and what her morals expect. She has to choose if she wants the current way of life to sustain or join the rusties who refuse to have the procedure to make them beautiful completed. It is all about choice's and each one can affect not only yourself but the others around you.
  • Authority: Describe this theme.
  • Enviromentalism

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 3 of 5 in Uglies. (standard series)

Preceded by Pretties, and followed by Extras.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Scott Westerfeld (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Yaffa Jaskoll (Cover Artist)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Country: United States
Publication Date: March 2006
ISBN: 1-416-94795-7
Page Count: 372

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

13+, some violence

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Uglies
  • Pretties
  • Extras
  • Revealing Eden
  • The Roar
  • The Whisper
  • Delirium

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Uglies
  • Pretties

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