Uglies: Shay's Story (Graphic Novel) (Uglies Graphic Novels, #1)

by Scott Westerfeld and Devin Grayson

Steven Cummings (Illustrator)

“This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves.”—Shay
 
Uglies told Tally Youngblood’s version of life in Uglyville and the budding rebellion against the Specials. Now comes an exciting graphic novel revealing new adventures in the Uglies world—as seen through the eyes of Shay, Tally’s rebellious best friend who’s not afraid to break the rules, no matter the cost.
 
A few months shy of her sixteenth birthday, Shay eagerly awaits her turn to become a Pretty—a rite-of-passage operation called “the Surge” that transforms ordinary Uglies into paragons of beauty. Yet after befriending the Crims, a group of fellow teens who refuse to take anything in society at face value, Shay starts to question the whole concept. And as the Crims explore beyond the monitored borders of Uglyville into the forbidden, ungoverned wild, Shay must choose between the perks of being Pretty and the rewards of being real.

• ISBN10: 0345527224
• ISBN13: 9780345527226
• Publish Date: 6 March 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Random House Inc
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 208
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780345527226

Reviews

[wcs53]

This was a pretty decent graphic novel, based on one of the character's view of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies. I haven't read Uglies, but this graphic novel has piqued my interest enough that I may check it out next year.

This particular book tell's the beginning of Shy's story, in a world where at 16 people are transformed, by surgery, from their natural 'ugly' form into what has become the accepted 'pretty' form. Shay discovers that there are some people who have rebelled against the system and gone into hiding preferring the natural 'ugly' form. She is torn between joining them or accepting being turned into a 'pretty'. I enjoyed the story and the artwork of this one, but it is only part one, so I'll need to look for the next part, as I'd like to find out what happened to Shay. I can't comment on how this fits in with the book series, as I haven't read it yet, but I'd like to remedy that soon.

[lisacee]

There wasn't really anything new in this book. I was expecting more off-camera things from Shay's point of view that we didn't get in Uglies but there was very little. I know this book is the first in a series and it had to set the story up, but it is clearly written for someone who has already read Uglies. It just felt like re-reading Uglies, but with less Tally and not much more Shay.

I'll still probably read the next one(s), though. Since it's the first in the series, and it only took 2 days to read, I'll see what the others bring. I'd really like to Shay taken in by Special Circumstances and her experiences with them that we didn't see from Tallys POV.