Scott Westerfeld
Extras (2007)
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Science Fiction (Storyteller Focus)
Plot Summary:
Aya Fuse is a fifteen year old extra, or translation to her - a nobody. The city in Japan, in which she lives, is based upon one's popularity. Everyone's goal is to get to the top thousand. Poor Aya's face rank is 451,369. Aya is determined to kick a great story on her feed that will significantly boost her face rank. She stumbles across the Sly Girls who are the opposite of most people in the city and are determined to be invisible, not boost their face rank. Originally, Aya just wants to kick a story of the Sly Girl mag-lev surfing on the train (which is using their hoverboard to surf on a train) but as she joins this group they uncover a dark secret one night--inhumans or "freaks" are making missiles to blow up the world. Aya is now determined more than ever to kick this story and save the world. "The end of the world isn't something we can kick halfway." Tally Youngblood(the main character from the past three books who has saved everyone from a dystopian world) and her gang of Specials, also nicknamed Cutters, arrive to help out Aya and her friends. They travel outside the city limits into the Rusty's ruins. Rusties are the ancient people to them that destroyed themselves and most of their world, which would be present day to us. Outside the city limits they are trying to figure out what the inhumans are up to and how to stop them. SPOILER: The inhumans are actually trying to prevent another mess like with the Rusties. They are stealing tons of metal so that the cities will stop expanding and they are shooting that metal up into space and then are going to build a new habitat for themselves up there. When Aya returns home, her face rank is now number three. She is invited to the Thousand Faces party and enjoys the company of her crush, Frizz.
Geographical Setting: Japan
Time Period: Distant Future
Series: Book 4 in Uglies series
Appeal Characteristics:
Extras is a young adult science fiction novel. It is set in the future and contains numerous examples of advanced technology and gadgets abound. Everyone has hovercams following them around. They fly on hoverboards, can float on hoverball rigs, and even have floating mansions. They can easily change their appearance through drastic surgeries or can produce new items through holes in the walls. The main character, Aya, is a young girl placed with the mission of saving the world. There is a huge storyteller focus to this novel especially because it is very fast-paced and action driven. We follow Aya through some moral changes because she starts out only concerned about boosting her face rank but in the end, even though she has done that, she is more pleased with the good that she has done. The secondary characters are also well-defined, causing the reader to be attached to everyone they are introduced to and be even more enveloped in the story. Best of all--the ending is very "happy-making."
Read-alikes: If you read all of the Uglies series and are looking for a new Scott Westerfeld young adult science fiction series, try Peeps. A cross between science fiction and horror, it's a world filled with vampires or infected people much like HIV. The protagonist is a young teenager named Cal out to save the world and the pace is very fast and action driven. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman, like Extras also has a young girl protagonist namedLyra. This book is set in London and the Artic, where there is another world filled with magic. Although this book is more fantasy than science fiction, the reader follows the main character through a journey of moral lessons and discoveries while Lyra is also trying to fulfill her destiny of saving their world. Another action-based young adult science fiction novel would be Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Marcus is a seventeen year old hacker that stumbles upon something he shouldn't have and is determined to get down to the bottom of things. This book is also set in the future and is filled with technology and fun gadgets. Like the main character in Extras, Marcus also knows how to outwit the bigger systems. The Host by Stephenie Meyer, although listed as adult science fiction, features the main character Melanie, a seventeen year old girl, who is one of the few who are able to resist the parasitic invasion of aliens in their brain. This novel features lots of character development and also has a storyteller focus portraying a romance as well. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin is set in the world of Elsewhere which is an afterlife in which the people get younger instead of aging and eventually are sent back to Earth as babies. The main character, fifteen year old Liz is not at all thrilled about that and searches for a way to change it. The story is very character oriented and features a similar life lesson journey as Aya's. Although not set in the future, it is still set in another world that is not one we are used to seeing and the reader gets to be engulfed in imagination.
Red Flags: none
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