Following the events of the previous book, Tally Youngblood has returned to the city in which she grew up, voluntarily submitting to the operation all people undergo when they turn sixteen. Tally’s one of the very few who know, however, that the same operation which turns you from an normal, ugly person into one of the elegant Pretties also has an adverse affect upon the brain, turning the victims into shallow, capricious, careless sheep. As a matter of fact, Tally’s only become a Pretty so she can help test the cure which will heal her surgery-damaged mind and return her full mental capacity. First Tally, and then any Pretty who wants to be normal. Unfortunately, Tally and her new friends are having so much fun being Pretty, that she might not want to be cured, much less rescued by her allies in the Smoke, those few who live outside the city, free of the rigid social controls which rule society.

Then a secret visitor brings Tally the cure, and once she and a friend have taken it, they find their minds sharper, clearer, more focused. From there, they start a whole new underground movement, one which will inevitably bring them into conflict with Special Circumstances, the dark secret police who’ve used Tally to betray her friends in the past. Even as Tally looks for a way to escape the city, trouble begins to close in around her, and a dear friend may be the one to sell her out once and for all.

Westerfeld’s certainly been offering up some fascinating young adult stories in the past few years, and Pretties, the middle book in a trilogy featuring Tally Youngblood, doesn’t disappoint as it furthers the storyline. It’s set firmly in the dystopian utopia genre, where the perfect society hides dark secrets and corruption at the core, with the inevitable resistance movement living free in the wilderness. But for all that the themes are familiar and easily recognized, it still feels fresh and interesting, especially with its other core message: beware homogeneity and mandatory conformity, and it’s better to be natural than to be too artificially pretty. I’m looking forward to the final book in the trilogy, to see how Westerfeld ends this, and if he can pull off a strong conclusion.