Meh.

I like young adult fiction in general. It tends to be lightweight and easy to read, and it's usually pretty entertaining to boot.

Scott Westerfeld's Ugliesmeets two of those criteria: it's lightweight and easy to read. But it's not so much with the entertaining.

Oh, it starts off well enough. Tally, the main character, lives in a post-apocalyptic future where everything is just peachy. People learned from the mistakes of the "Rusties," the generations of the past that cut down too many trees and used too much raw material to build cities and basically robbed the land blind. So we've got the Environmental Message coming through loud and clear.

Then there's also the fact that in this society, your life is divided into neat little stages: you are born and grow up with your parents as a "Littlie" in the suburbs until age 12, at which point you become an "Ugly" and are shipped off to Uglyville. When you turn 16, you receive an operation that turns you into a "Pretty," and you get to party all day every day in New Pretty Town. As you age, you'll have another operation when you are a "Middle Pretty" and choose a career, and eventually, when you're really old, you'll become a "Crumbly" and move to Crumblyville. It's just the way it's done, and everyone's happy with it.

Almost everyone, of course. There has to be some drama, right? The central question is, then, why do we have to look/act/think/be like everyone else? What about our individual faces/thoughts/bodies/actions? So then we've got the Everyone Is Beautiful In Their Own Way Message (also known as the I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, And Doggone It, People Like Me Message).

Both of these messages are fine, really. But my goodness, could they be any more obvious? I think not. Even for the teen set, for whom this book is intended, I think it's a bit overly didactic.

I could forgive that, though, if it reached any kind of conclusion. It doesn't. It's the cheapest way ever to get people to read your sequels: don't end. At all. No kidding---by the time this book "ends"--and I use that term very loosely--not one single complication that has been brought up throughout the story has been resolved. Not. One. This made me feel like all 425 pages had been The Longest Setup Ever for the next book, and I think that's a cheap trick.

In the end, I just didn't care enough about anyone to make me want to continue--and I'd had enough Very Important Messages. Maybe you'll feel differently.