Specials book review scott westerfeld biography wikipedia

Scott westerfeld writing history

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. In 'Specials', Tally has been transformed from her New Pretty self into a Cutter, part of an elite group of Specials who are seen as 'icier', more cognisant, than all of the other characters in the series.

Transformation is the key part of this novel, Tally having transformed from an Ugly to a Pretty to a Special over the course of the trilogy. To Tally, each evolution is an improvement. She is now part of the intellectual elite, Cutters are people who could remove the brain lesions on their own and thus see themselves as better than all of the other pretties.

However, when she meets Zane again, she must confront whether or not this is the truth. Did the operation to make her Special remove the lesions in her brain or create new ones? Is her 'iciness' a sign of a greater intellect or another genetic enhancement? Symptomatic of her idealistic youth, Tally's love for Zane is at the heart of the novel.

When she sees him for the first time in New Pretty Town, she is initially repulsed by his tremors. This is her first clue that something is wrong with the way she is thinking; Tally knows that she would never rationally be repulsed by Zane. Her love for him is impulsive and destructive and goes against all of her training. The most notable example of this is when her determination to make Dr.

Cable turn Zane into a Special prompts Tally and Shay to break into the city armory, an innocuous trick that sets off the war between Tally's city and Diego, their neighbor. This is a sign that the peace created with the advent of the pretty surgery is easily shattered when people start to think, or, as Westerfeld puts it, 'without lesions making everyone agreeable, society was left roiling in a constant battle of words, images, and ideas.