Family...

Tally went to talk to Dr. Cable and she told her that she got there a few days ago and that once she was sure that that was the right SMoke she activated the pendant and she told her that she hid so Dr. Cable told her to go and look for it. She went to the top of there roof where her hover boar was charging but she couldn't reach it because it was at the other side of the roof and a Special was guarding her. Her plan was to get a hoverboard that was near her and jump of the roof but she begun to loose balance and almost felt but the Special saved her and he felt instead but in no time he was back on the roof without any injuries or any pain. Tally continued to pretended to be looking for the pendent but instead she snapped her fingers and the hoverboard came to her knocking the Special's feet he felt of the roof again giving Tally time to jump in the hoverboard. Tally was able to scape but she was chased by hovercars. They where detecting her by the heat of her body so she went to the tunnel on the mountain that was very cold and she hoped that the hovercars weren't be able to detect her there. Then when the sound of the hovercars where gone she said to her self out loud that she was practically dead. Then she heard a voice form behind her. It was David. Both of them waited to next morning to go out the mountain but before they go Tally told David that she will help him find his parent wherever they where, in Smoke or in the city. Then they went to look for David parents and look for food. On theirs way there they had to go through Smoke. They passed through the place where the library was but now it was gone. The Specials destroyed it with all the books and magazines inside because they didn't wanted people to get used to ugly faces on the magazines, normal faces. They they continued and the passed through the place where Tally first tried to scape with the Boss. She looked around and found the bag full of magazines that the Boss wanted to protects and then she found the Boss' dead body. When they got to David's parents house they saw that it was all burned. Tally went inside to look for David parents but they weren't there. Then David took Tally to a cave near the house here they keep dehydrated food, water purifiers, clothes, sleeping bags and hoverboards. After the eat, they left at sunset. They approximated that their journey would last about ten days. When they got to the desert they decided to stop because of the day light. They rested and eat on a building that was held-destoyed that the Rusties builded. They talked about how did the Rusties destroyed their wold and depended on many things. Some days had passed and they finally got to the Rusty Ruins. For Tally they looked a lot smaller than they used too and less scarier. Finally they could see the city They only had a few hours before the sunrise to get to Special Circumstances. Tally and David climbed a building to get a better view of Special Circumstances. They planed to jump form there to get to the other side of the sensor wire using Bungee jackets. They where about to go to Uglyville to get the Bungee jackets when they heard steps coming towards them. The steps where form 3 girls that where visiting the Rusty Ruins. Tally convinced them to help them with their prank. At night the 3 girls went to Pretty Town and used glitter to write THE SMOKE LIVES in the sky for just a few moments, then it disappear. Tally and David got the Bungee jackets and throw themselves form a building and where successful to get to the other side without activating the alarms.  When they got in to the actual building, they looked for Smokies all around the building but they didn't found anything until they got to a door that said "Long-Term Detention" and she heard that familiar voices came out form that room. Then Dr. Cable got out of the room with Shay but Shay was a Pretty now. David electroshocked Dr. Cable and she was unconscious on the floor. Shay told Tally that she had just arrived from a party and that she is glad to hear that things are good between Tally and David. The rest of Smokies where inside that room too but they where still uglies. They where able to free them and they took Dr. Cable with them. They went to the roof so they could scape and David insisted on asking where was his dad and his mother told him that he was dead.

"Maybe they didn't want you to realise that every civilisation has its weakness. There's always one thing we depend on." (346)

In the book Tally and David are talking of how the Rusties destroyed the world. WHen they talked about the Rusties they are referring to us, our generation. According to them, our world is going to end because of a bacteria that affects petroleum and makes it explode on contact with oxygen, that is why our society collapsed, because we depend a lot in petroleum. Tally thought that their society was perfect and that it could never happened what happened to the Rusties because they had renewable energy, sustainable resources and a fixed population but it doesn't only happen this with economics but this also could happen with ideas. The idea of being Pretty or Ugly in this society might be its weakness.

"Tally's free and barefoot.' They left her with a score of pairs to pick from..." (329)

In This part of the book, Croy was able to see Tally escaping but she wasn't wearing shoes so she took of his shoes and spread the word "Tally's free and barefoot" so everyone left their shoes for Tally to pick from. This shows a act of solidarity towards Tally because all of them left there their shoes just for her. They acted like a united community or better, they acted like a supportive family. They really cared about Tally and they where worried for her. They want her to be able to be free. But even though she betrayed them they still loved her and did everything possible to help her.

I really like this book. It was full of adventures. In each page I read something new and interesting happened. It has a little bit of everything: love, action, drama. I really look froward to read the second book "Pretties". I highly recommend this book to people who are about my age 14-15 years old.

Beauty and the Beast

     Shay told Tally that she has to go and talk to the Boss first of all. They went to the library where the Boss was. Shay showed Tally some magazines where “ugly” people appeared. Then Shay went to see if the Boss was ready to she Tally, meanwhile Tally was about to send the message to Dr. Cable when Shay returned. A few moments later the Boss appeared and told Tally that she must work. Then they went to eat Tally told some smokies all that she had been through to get there. Then they had to go to work. Tally’s hands where red and sored because all of the hard work she made. She took a break with David and they went to a tunnel that was made by Rusties to build the railroads. There, David told Tally something that not many people knew, he was born there. That night Tally told them more of her adventures and that she lost her sleeping bag so Shay took her to the trading center so she could trade some SpagBol for a sleeping bag and a sweater.

     Some days had passed and Tally is getting used to the routines at Smoke. One morning Tally and David where on their way to work as usual until David told Tally that the have a gift for her. Gifts weren’t very usual because everything would be traded or repaired. He gave her a pair of gloves he had made when he was about Tally’s age.

      At work she had to work with Croy. Croy begun to ask her questions about how she got so many SpagBol if she had being out for nine day and she only had food for two weeks. During lunch Tally and Shay talked. Shay looked upset and she told Tally that she didn’t understand why David gave Tally the gloves instead of her and even though both of them had the same hand size. Also she told Tally that she should tell David about the special someone that gave her the heart necklace. Tally promised that she would tell everything to David.

      That night, she ate alone and the whole day she spent cutting trees all by her self. When she finished eating David showed up. Both of them went to talk alone. David told Tally that he was sorry for causing Tally and Shay fight because of the gloves he gave Tally. He also told her that she was the first person to get to Smoke all alone, everyone goes in groups or David helps them get there so he thought Tally was very brave. Tally saw David as a Pretty below the moonlight just for one moment. Then Tally told him that Shay liked him but he told her that he liked Shay but not as much because she wasn’t serious and Tally and because she wasn’t Tally. Tally had to keep her promise so she told David that someone gave her that necklace and that she told that person about Smoke. David wasn’t angry and he told her that that person might or might not show up but he wants Tally to meat his parents.

     David and Tally where on his way to meet David’s parents (Az and Maddy) when he told her that they didn’t lived in Smoke because it was too dangerous. When they got to David parent’s house they introduced to Tally and they offered her tea. The four of them where talking when they mentioned Shay and David parents asked David why he never introduced Shay to them. This made Tally think a lot. Also David and his mother argued that if she could trust Tally to tell her the truth. Tally was sitting right next to them and she didn’t knew what they where talking about. At last David convinced his mother to tell Tally the truth about being pretty. Az and Maddy told her that they where doctors and that thy found out that most of the pretties had a lesion in their brains and they thought it was because of the operation. The tested many people and got to the conclusion that pretties had the lesions except if they where firefighter, doctors, politicians or that worked at Special Circumstances. They said that becoming a pretty doesn’t only change the way you look but it also changes the way you think. They also talked about how they became from pretties to uglies again until Tally was feeling tire so they left.

     They were heading back to Smoke when they started talking and David told Tally that she was beautiful. Then they got closer and kissed. Then Tally felt the cold of her necklace so she started to run and David followed her. They got to a campfire at Smoke where Tally burned her pendent. She was sure that Special Circumstances would never find them now. David took Tally to her bunkhouse when David tried to kiss her again but she didn’t let him because Shay was just inside. She had to manage a way to tell Shay what happened.

     The next morning Tally woke up with the sounds of people running and screaming. She looked out the window and she saw the sky full of hovercars form Special Circumstances that had arrived. She saw all of those hovercars and everything burning. She decided that the only way to scape was by running through the forest. She found herself next to the Boss and they made a plan in which one of them ran and distracted the Special by throwing pepper into her eyes and the other one ran into the forest. Tally didn’t had any shoes on so she was the one that had to go and distract the Special. She started to run but when she was close to the Special she felt and she couldn’t throw the pepper into her eyes but she saw that the Boss was able to reach to the forest. Then the Special picked up the container filled with pepper so she kicked it into her face until she was covered in it. She screamed and Tally had the chance to run. She got to a bush and hide there. Three more Specials appeared trying to look for Tally and the Boss. Tally needed to cough because she had smelled some of the pepper but she tried to hold it but at the end a Special caught her anyways.

     He took her to where some of the other Smokies where. Most of them had bruises and where bleeding. There she saw Croy and they talked about the people they saw and didn’t saw. Some moments later Shay was brought in. She blamed Tally that all of this was her fault, first that she stole her boyfriend and then she betrayed the whole Smoke. Then some Specials came and scanned Cory and took him out with other people that where in their city. When they got to Tally they told her that Dr. Cable wanted to talk with her and took her away in front of Shay.

"Nature, at least, didn't need an operation to be beautiful. It just was." (230).

Tally is now realising that there is much more things that are way more beautiful than people after the operation that made them pretties. She now understands that nature is naturally beautiful and it doesn't need to be modified to be beautiful and unique as it is. Nowadays, nature is beautiful too but we are making a lot of harm to the environment and destroying it for example with pollution or deforestation. We should make a change to keep natures beauty for a long time.

But it was if something had changed inside Tally's head, something that had turned his face pretty to her (250).

Tally is now focussing on what is on the inside than what is on the outside. Now that she sees the beauty on David's inside now her outside perspective is also changing. The real beauty is in the inside instead than in the outside like many people think. An ugly personality destroys a pretty face so it doesn't matter if you are "ugly" or beautiful (in my opinion everyone is beautiful), what counts is on the insides. A connection I made was with the Disney move Beauty and the Beast because Bell didn't care about the Beast's appearance but she loved him for what he had inside. 

I just can't put this book down! Something new and interesting happens in each page that I flipped through. I predict that Tally will talk to Dr. Cable and she will explain Tally that by destructing the necklace it automatically send a message to her showing her the location of Smoke. Tally will find a way to help their friends and rebuild Smoke somewhere else's where the city doesn't find them. They will still be mad at Tally but with the time they will become friends again and she will be able to be with David again. 

Life is like a roller coaster

     Finally, the big day for Tally had come. It was the day of her operation to become a Pretty. She was waiting for the car to pic her up to take her to the hospital where she would have her operation. When she got to the hospital, she had to wait some hours until a man came up to her and told that there was a problem with her operation and that she had to come with him. She got inside a car with the man and he took her to a building and he took Tally to a room where was a women. She introduced herself to Tally. Her name was Dr. Cable. She and Tally talked about Shay. Dr. Cable asked Tally if she knew where Shay was and she told her that she didn’t and she kept the note that Shay gave her a secret. Then, Dr. Cable promised Tally that until she doesn’t help them find Shay, she would never become a Pretty. This broke Tally’s heart because all she wanted was to become a Pretty. 

     When she got back to Uglyville to her room, she saw that everything was gone. Her bed, furniture, pictures and wallscreen, everything was recycled. Then she saw her parents and Peris that went to comfort her and make her fell better. They convince her to go and talk to Dr. Cable again and tell her that Shay left a note. When she talked to Dr. Cable she took a survival kit and packed it with dehydrate food for 4 weeks and gave Tally a necklace with a little heart in it. She showed her that it opened and told her that it will only respond to her eye-print and that she has to activate it when she got to smoke. Dr. Cable was expecting Tally to go to Smoke on her own.  After Dr. Cable show Tally herself in a mirror, Tally accepted to go because she didn't wanted to be ugly the rest of her life. 

     She left that day at midnight. She only took her survival kit, the hoverboard and the heart necklace that Dr. Cable gave her. When she got to the Rusty Ruins she looked for the coaster that Shay talked about tin the note she gave Tally. Tally thought that it was the roller coaster that had a gap in it but she was wrong because the note also said that it was flat and long so she continued looking. She found something that looked like a roller coaster but it was long and flat. It didn’t made any sense for Tally because she thought that why anyone would want a roller coaster that is flat if the turns and climbs are the best parts. She started following it. Later in the night she found a few roller coaster cars and remembered that the Rusty Ruins needed to trade with other towns and that they might used those cars to transport form town to town. 

     The sky started to get lighter and lighter and then she got to the sea. She was crossing a bridge when she realized that it didn’t went all the way to the other side and that in the river wasn’t enough metal to support her so she will fall to the ocean. She tried to jump to get to the other side of the bridge but she couldn’t. Then one of the metal detectors on her hoverboard began to flicker and Tally began tot go up again. When she got to a solid ground again, she got hungry so she decided to look for some dehydrated food in her bag. She found a packet of food that said “SpagBol”. She didn’t knew what that meant but when she opened and dropped it into the purifier, it beamed spaghetti Bolognese. That meal was the best one she has gotten in a long time ago. She finished eating and she had to go to a second bridge that also had a gap. It was too wide to jump and hiking around it would waist a lot of time but the drop wasn’t as deep as the fist one but still it was deadly. She was too tired to think of a solution and her hoverboard was going out of power now. 

     She unfolded her hoverboard to leave it to recharge itself with the sun and she took out her sleeping bag to get some sleep too but she couldn’t. She thought that by eating a little she might be able to get asleep faster. She took out the packets of food one by one but everyone said SpagBol. She counted forty-one packets of SpagBol and a few minutes later she felt a sleep. When she got up, she was ready to go except that her hoverboard was wet. She tried to dry it with her jacket but there was too much water and not enough jacket to clean it up. Meanwhile her hoverboard dried, she decided to eat a SpagBol. She didn’t had enough water in her purifier so she tried to fill it with the water form her jacket but it only fill it up the half so she had to eat a dense, over spiced spaghetti that required a lot of chewing. When she finished she was ready to go. According to Shay’s letter she had to make the worst mistake so she thought that she should get down to the river and then hike up. She threw herself to the cliff and thought that the stonewalls would have some metal in them but she was wrong. She thought that she would die until the hoverboard got to the river and stood still above the water. 

     Then she remembered Shays letter that said that “four days later take the side you despise.” So she started her way again. She had some sunburns and she now hated the SpagBol. On the third day up the river, Tally decided to take a bath. Tally got out the river because she heard that something was coming. She continued her journey up the river until the river divided into two. She had to choose one. She chose the smaller river branch, the one in the right because she remembered that Shay didn’t liked her right side of her face. When the sun raised she saw many white flowers and she loved them but she was very tired so she felt asleep. 

     When she woke up there was a fire near her so she had to go. She went around a hill and looked for her hoverboard and the river. When she found them, she saw a flying machine that passed just above her and made her fall into the river. She tried to go up to her hoverboard when she saw that the machine had landed and that people where coming in her way. They helped Tally to get to shore. She saw the eyes of the man that was helping her and they where blue bug eyes, just what she had to look for in Shay’s letter. When he took of his mask, Tally could see that he was a Pretty. They helped her and took her in their flying machine. They called themselves rangers. They knew that Tally was going to Smoke so they left her in the usual spot where they think that Smoke is near because Smoke’s location is a big secret. 

     When they got there, Tally got down and thanked them and she started looking for something that looked like a bald head according to Shay’s note. She found a hill that looked just like that but she had to wait until the sunrise for someone to go and look for her. She started thinking that she hoped that her necklace would be ruined because of the water but the only way to go home and become a Pretty was by sending the message when she got to Smoke and betray her friend.  The next day the smokies what to find her. Shay was one of them. The famous David was there too. They took Tally to Smoke, her new home. 

Tally had always thought of the city as huge, a whole world in itself, but the scale of everything out here was so much grander. And so beautiful. (152-153)  

Tally in this part of the book have being out of the city for one day and she starts to see that there is a lot more than Uglyville  and Pretty town. When you go out of your comfort zone you can learn, see and discover so many new things that you might like. Then you will realised of how many stuff you were missing because you didn't go out of the comfort zone. For example, Tally would never see the white flowers that she liked so much or met the rangers from another Pretty Town.  Even though Tally was sent to Smoke for bad purposes, there is a good part of all of this, she had the chance to see and experience new things that she wouldn't if she wasn't sent there. 

This thing was a roller coaster, but long and flat...What fun was a roller coaster without any turns or climbs? (145)

In this part of the story she is obviously refereeing to a train rail road or something but she thinks that is a very boring roller coaster. Once I read a quote that says "Life is like a roller coaster. It has ups and downs. But it's your choice to scream or enjoy the ride." When I read this part of the book I immediately remembered of this quoter and it got me thinking that if life is like a roller coaster then that life would be very boring and then I thought that my life is just like that, without many interesting things and without taking risks or any thing. It might not be like that but when I read it I really related it with my life.

I am really enjoying reading this book. I predict that Tally would be able to send the message to Dr. Cable but first she thought about it very much but in the end she does it. Then she will get caught and they will expels her out of Smoke and she would be left alone again in middle of the wild and then Dr. Cable will get to Smoke and destroy everything and take everyone to Uglyville except for Tally because she was out in the wild and she has to find a way back to Uglyville.