Extras is the 4th book in the "Uglies" series that is about a dystopian future where society can make everyone beautiful and adjust anything about them painlessly. In doing so society also kind of changes their other interior workings to make them more malleable and susceptible to control by the government.
On your 16th birthday you are taken to "Pretty Island" and made to look however you want to. The people are unaware of sort of mind control that exists at first and they just attribute the fact that their friends who were friends with them on their 15th birthday have just succored to the pressures of being a pretty and therefore turn their back on anyone that hasn't yet gotten the procedure, but the reality is much darker than that.
In previous books the focus was primarily on Tally Youngblood, who was 15 in the first book "Uglies", then a bit older in the later book "Pretties" and even a bit older in the third book in the trilogy that was entitled "Specials."
"Extras" differs from previous books as Tally is not the focus of attention but instead we follow 15-year old Aya Fuse, who has never met Tally and barely knows anything about her.
Nadi is much happier than it appears
In "Extras" the world has figured out and removed the control chip (not what it is called but it was what was coupled with the "pretty surgery" that kept people in line) and now live free lives and actually still get the plastic surgery if they choose as has the rest of the world who was using this tech. In Japan, which is where this book takes place, strangely despite Westerfeld not really knowing a great deal about the actual country, the society has introduced a sort of social credit system, which as the reader we are extremely aware is simply another form of governmental control.
Everyone is vying for the top spot and just like today's social media, people are willing to do whatever it takes to go up in the rankings. Because our main girl Aya doesn't really do anything particularly special and hasn't had "pretty surgery" she tried to climb in the ranks by doing some sort of journalism or "kicking" as it is called in the book.
When Aya is doing her research she runs into a group of rebel girls who like to "surf" high-speed trains called the "Sly Girls.'
If this is sounding pretty juvenile and stupid you are not too far off the mark with that. It is pretty stupid but Westerfeld is such a genius writer that you continue reading despite the very high cringe levels especially when he attempts to make up "young people slang."
Suffer through it I guess, because it is easy to do since Scott has a particular way of writing that just doesn't let you go away so easily.
So she goes and surfs trains, gains the trust of the Sly Girls and then some other stuff happens and they uncover yet another global conspiracy on the part of the government or something like that.
You darn teenagers and your abilities to solve all of the world's problems with your profound skills and critical thinking that is absolutely true of how teenagers are, amirite?
This is the issue I take with Scott Westerfeld's books and at the moment I have read 6 of them now and they all have the same underlying theme: Teenagers are the bedrock of society and older people are mean old morons that are trying to ruin everyone's lives.
Talk about pandering. He does have a great strategy though because the 18-30 age group is more loose with their spending than any other age demographic on real Earth.
It does get to be a bit much as far as cringe is concerned after a while if you are outside of this age range and probably a bit if you are inside it. There is only so much "we da best" that I can tolerate no matter who it is that you are talking about.
In "Extras" i think we kind of start to see how Westerfeld might have taken this dystopian universe to a point where he can't really milk this cash-cow much longer although he does leave the ending of the book on a bit of an open end so that he can return to it later if he so wishes. Since this book was first published nearly 20 years ago, perhaps we can presume that he might be done with it for now? It is evident that there is an idea of turning these into movies because they read like teenage action drama films but after the collosal failure of "Uglies" the film.
One can only guess (or watch it to know for sure) at why it is that "Uglies" failed so monumentally as a film but it was a combination of lack of budget, perceived "diversity quotas", and just bad acting that did it for a lot of people. I suffered through it because I had enjoyed the first book quite a lot but it wasn't easy to make it all the way through that man, it was not easy.
I suppose he kept writing more of these because they were selling and even though I started reading "Extras" simply because I couldn't really think of anything else to read at the time, it was an enjoyable read in that it was easy to follow and the chapters are just the perfect length. This is a sign of a good writer: They can take something that you aren't actually interested in, maybe even write something that kind of turns you off to the material even, yet you still keep reading because Scott Westerfeld simply has a gift that not many writers possess.
That being said, if there are ever any more of these I will be unlikely to read them. Thankfully, since it has been 20 years and Westerfeld has moved on to many other projects, it does seem unlikely that there will be another one. It's funny to me that in the original publication this book was almost exactly 400 pages and I always feel like this is the minimum amount of pages that an author has to make a novel to get it onto certain lists. It's like the 90 minute film, you just have to make it that long.
Do I recommend that you read this? Probably not. I would say the only reason why you should check this one out is if you already read the "Uglies Trilogy" and are itching for more. Or if you are extremely bored and too lazy to walk your Kindle to the other room to load a different book on it, which is what the case was with me.