We're all just background: Book Critic at Play #4

Extras, by Scott Westerfeld
I’m not sure if this is the best entry in the Uglies series or simply the most cerebral. The action is in keeping with the other three books—the surfboards are there, the hidden forces, the adversaries who could easily destroy the hero and who are probably manipulating her as well—though this one seems to take a little longer to get started. The pacing is still nearly perfect and the characterization nearly enthralling; the only bummer is that this one is not about Tally Youngblood, and I’d become rather enamored of our young heroine. Ah, well. Extras takes place after—how long after is not clear, but not more than a few years probably—the events of Specials, the third entry in the series. Aya Fuse is a kicker, or wants to be. The best kickers are citizen journalists; the least of them are gossip columnists. Instead of YouTube, the citizens of Extras have constant feeds embedded in their eyes, or projected from. Extras is a world of instant media, a celebrity culture where no one stays a celebrity for long. The goal of most citizens is to increase their face ranking, their level of fame. At the start of the novel, Aya is a nobody; of course, that changes, and so does her understanding of face ranks, of how life is, of how life should be. Yes, Tally makes an appearance—she has to; it’s the world she remade, and this novel deals with the question of responsibility. But more than that, it’s an exploration of fame, of desire, of identity. Who is Aya Fuse really? Who does she want to be? Does that desire make sense? Does it define her? As with each of the novels in this series, nothing is quite what it seems, including the main character. This is dystopian sf, sure, but it’s also classic coming of age—Aya has to decide where her true path lies, whether what she needs is truly the same as what she wants, who her true friends are and what loyalty means. Part of the fun of a Westerfeld novel seems to be trying to figure these things out before the heroine does, and part is in the language itself—this author combines elements of Australian slang, tech argot, and the language of the world he has invented to create a cant for his characters that is not found elsewhere. This is cultural criticism disguised as pulse-pounding sf thriller. (Image ©2006 HarperCollins Children's Books)