Specials by Scott Westerfeld (American, 2006)

Summary:
In a dystopian world society is divided into two groups: “uglies”, who are young people before their 16th birthday, and “pretties”, everyone else after a surgery to enhance their bodies with the price of numbing their minds. The book narrates the story of Tally, who belongs to a group called “Specials”, who are even more enhanced pretties but with special abilities in order to protect the city. Her group, “The Cutters”, are in charge of taking down a rebellious city, ’New Smoke', run by uglies. The Cutters manage to find the city called “Diego” which has created “The New System'' opposite to the Pretties system. Once there, everyone in the group, except Tally, takes the cure from the brain surgery they had gone through to become like the “uglies”. In hopes to stop an attack on Diego, Tally escapes to the Special Circumstances Quarters, where she confronts Dr. Cable, the one responsible for all the brain surgeries. Dr. Cable ends up taking the cure and Tally is imprisoned. Diego leaders expose Dr. Cable’s wrongdoings and the cure is spread through the “pretties”. Tally is forced by The New Systemto go under a surgery that will extract all her features that make her a “weapon”, she escapes before the surgery could be performed and finds David, her friend. She decides to live in the wild protecting nature from humans’ excess.

Another summary:
The story opens with Tally Youngblood and her group, an elite group of special super-humans with enhanced strength and reflexes, called the Cutters led by Shay. This group is part of Special Circumstances working for Dr. Cable. The Cutters disguise themselves as Uglies to crash a party to identify New Smokies. Tally does find one girl from New Smoke but they can not capture her. On the chase, a battle between the Smokies, who had advanced technology, and Cutters begins. The Smokies win this encounter, kidnapping Fausto, one of the Cutters, and leaving Shay and Tally injured. The girl from New Smoke had some pills addressed to Zane, Tally's boyfriend. Hence, Tally and Shay decided to go to Zane. They have a plan that requires Zane and his friends to run away and find the New Smoke, but since Zane has caused some trouble, he has a tracking necklace, which they have to cut off. To do so, Tally and Shay decide to break into the city of Armory to steal something to cut the necklace. They do succeed. However, they caused a lot of damage in the Armory, putting the city on high alert. Zane and the Crims start their journey to the New Smoke. Shay and Tally are following them from close. Tally receives a guide to New Smoke from an old friend. She and Shay argued and split up. Tally continues tracking Zane. They got to Diego, a city that accepts runaways freely, and they had adopted the Pretty cure. Then, in this city, everyone is allowed to look as they pleased. They do not follow international standards. Tally is amazed. She soon finds Fausto, whose Special brain has now been cured. Fausto tries to convince Tally to get a cure too. But, Tally is not willing to get a cure. Tally escapes but gets caught by Diego's authorities and locked up since they consider her a dangerous weapon. Tally is about to get the brain surgery, but Shay appears and helps her escape. Tally learns that the rest of the Cutters have also been cured, but they need her to protect Diego from Dr. Cable's attack. Zane dies due to some complications, Tally leaves Diego to tell Dr. Cable the truth. But, Dr. Cable already knows the truth about the Armory attack. Then, the only way to stop the war against Diego is to trick Dr. Cable. Tally injects Dr. Cable the cure, she slowly loses her power over the city, and the cure starts to spread. People from Diego take the chance and start to reveal Dr. Cable's cruel secret experiments. Tally stills not wanting to be despecialized, and with Dr. Cable's help, she becomes the only Special left. They go to Diego, where her friends have found their places in the New System. Tally goes to the wild.

Another summary:
Tally has been turned into a Special, a special agent for the city, and it's on her way to catch some Uglies from the Smoke by appearing like them thanks to tricks and implements, alongside her friend Shay and other turned agents called Cutters, who don't remember their past lives thanks to the brainwashing done upon them. Tally watches as Shay displays overconfidence thanks to being a Special, and they discover a girl from Smoke giving out the pills that make Pretties less bubble-headed from their brain lesions caused by the operations. She remembers Zane and tries to capture the girl, but is thwarted by David, who runs away with her.
 While trying to capture David on her own to get more notoriety with Dr.Cable, Tally and her friends get ambushed by Smokies carrying upgraded gear, which catches the cutters off guard. A fight ensues and Shay is taken by David and Fausto is kidnapped too, leaving Tally bewildered and injured. She quickly snaps to her senses and gives chase, tracking David's hoverboard
 Finally catching up with her friend's captors, Tally confronts David and reminds him of Zane, now impaired due to the pills her mom had made. David seems hurt by the remark but still tries to blindside Tally with hidden Smokies shooting at her but she evades the arrows, saves Shay, and sees David escape. After reuniting with the other cutters she discovers the drugs (nanos) they had were moved to New Pretty Town to be given to the Crims and finally be used on Zane, who's been found there.
 Tally convinces Shay to try and get Zane to turn him into a special to try and fix his broken mind and they sneak up on him when he's in his room in New Pretty Town. Everything seems normal but becoming a Special has changed Tally's perception and she finds him unattractive. Zane mocks them and tells them New Smoke has more pills. They try to strike a bargain with him, to betray the smokies, but Zane isn't sure.
 The cutters get focused by causing themselves physical harm, hence the name, and after doing their ritual, they proceed to go look for New Smoke. They track using old methods to an old museum turned armory where they find a man and some obstacles around the way, and have to run from matter eating nanos infecting and consuming everything. After another escape from the Smokies, they find Zane again and Tally confronts him. Later She and Shay go separate ways to track different groups and Tally finds Andrew Simpson Smith, an old acquaintance from an uncivilized place. Andrew tells Tally the location of the New Smoke, unaware at first of the changes she had endured.
 Shay and Tally regroup but split again after an argument, as Tally decides to keep watching over Zane instead of going for the otter cutters to plan an attack on New Smoke. Tally, hidden from sight, helps Zane and his companions, but is caught by Zane that way and they have a chat about how much they have changed. Zane kisses Tally expecting to awaken something inside her, but she backs away in disgust.
 After a while hidden away from view, the group reaches their destination and waits for their companions to appear. A helicopter lands down and takes all of them, while Tally infiltrates the vehicle on a stealthy maneuver.The helicopter reaches New Smoke, who Tally discovers is a whole city of people.
 While trying to look for a way to infiltrate the city, Tally is seen but treated as a citizen due to the city's prettiest eccentric looks. She discovers the city's name is Diego and that the inhabitants are getting cured of bubbleheadness and are already expanding their reach, making new buildings into the forest. People in Diego lived like rusties did and that confused Tally. Tally reunites with Fausto, living as a citizen there.
 Fausto tells Tally that the city had grown full of Smokies, almost overtaking Diego's government, and that as he was captured, he had consented to be operated to have the special taken away from him. Tally realizes he's cured from being special and gets defensive, trying to escape but is captured after injuring herself. She realizes that with Fausto on their side, she and the other cutters could be easily tracked by their shared communications system.
 Waking up in a padded cell, Tally strikes a conversation with her captors, who tell her they locked her for their safety as being a modified human makes her a danger to everyone else. They also tell her they are at war with her homeplace. They tell her she's to be put under operation to take away her body modifications and then she'll be able to go free. She's put under anesthesia but saved before the procedure by Shay. They catch up, but Tally discovers Shay is not special anymore and is siding with Fausto.
 Shay tells Tally that Dr. Cable blamed Diego for destroying the armory they had destroyed and started the war, and gaining control of the military is about to destroy the city. Shay and Tally talk while avoiding the war on route to tell Dr. Cable the truth about the armory's destruction, and why Tally was needed as a special still to convince Dr. Cable that they were to be blamed and they weren't being pressured by Diego. On their way there, Tally finds out Zane is about to die as a side effect of war causing trouble at the hospital he was in. Tally goes to say goodbye to Zane, who is suffering from cerebral death and about to be disconnected to make space for those injured by war and grief stricken, she continues her path to Dr. Cable.
 David contacts Tally to help her one more time, after explaining to her that thanks to all she's done, her mother was able to make a better cure for the pretties and make Diego the kind of city it was right before the war. Tally is given a dose of special cure and reaches New Pretty Town, where she attempts to reach Dr. Cable but is told she's too busy with war. After trying, she finally is able to see her only to discover Dr. Cable knew of the armory and was using it as an excuse to go to war. Tally injects Dr. Cable with the special cure and after days of being captured, the drug takes effect and makes Dr. Cable loses the reins of the war, now without her special modifications.
 After Dr. Cable's change of personality and the leak of her human experiments, the war loses traction and the New System stops support, ending the system they had been under for years and allowing Diego to take over with the cures. Tally is set to be despecialized, and with her put an end to specials, but she's aided by Dr. Cable, now full of remorse, and she breaks out of the building.
 Tally catches up with her past friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and decides to seek out David, who ran into the wild. They meet after a while and decide to live in the wild, while the cure spreads worldwide, watching and trying to keep a hold on humanity to avoid going back to overpopulation and deforestation.

World view: The world portrayed in the story is an hypothetical society which seems to be worse than the one the author lives in.
Future projections: It’s a negative emotional reaction against technological (transcendental, evolutive) or social progress. As such, It shows the horrible consequences of utopia or at least portrays skepticism or disappointment in regard to scientific or technological miracles.
Ideology: The control or suppression of futuristic technology is used as a means to maintain dominance and stability.
Characters, plot and writing style: The story features a rebellion against the adverse circumstances (revolutionaries may exploit newer technologies for these ends).
Classification: Non-dystopia