Specials: Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Trilogy Ends with Tally at Her Most Dangerous
Specials is the third book of Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy (in Spanish, the Traición saga), published in 2006. Set in the distant future, it takes place in a society where, at sixteen, everyone undergoes an operation that boosts their immune system and reflexes and gives them symmetrical, well-proportioned faces based on an international standard, so that they all look almost the same.
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Title: Specials (Uglies, book 3)
Format: English paperback (Simon & Schuster Children’s UK), 384 pages
Scope: Young-adult dystopia; concludes the original Uglies trilogy, later followed by Extras
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1398524581 (ASIN 1398524581)
Pretty, Peaceful and Obedient
The population is also routinely subjected to brain surgery to make people peaceful and obedient. The heroine, Tally, a rebellious and undisciplined girl, has now become one of the Specials. For a long time this elite was only a rumour; now it is a reality. They were said to be fast, attractive and powerful.
The Specials
The Specials have been surgically altered to feel superior to everyone else, and they are marked by heightened anger and euphoria. After a complex operation, Tally’s strength, speed and clarity of mind make her feel better than ever. The only problem is that she cannot remember anything of her previous life. She is given the Specials’ most important mission: to crush the resistance.
Tally Becomes the Enemy
The first two books followed Tally Youngblood as she fled the pretty operation and then struggled to keep her mind after it. In Specials she has been turned into exactly what she once feared: a Special, one of the enhanced agents of Special Circumstances, faster, stronger and colder than ordinary people, with razor-sharp teeth and an arrogant, "icy" clarity. Her mission is to hunt the rebels of the Smoke, the people who once sheltered her.
Dr Cable and the Question of Free Will
Behind the Specials stands Dr Cable, the chilling official who designs them. Tally’s struggle is to discover whether any part of her own will survives the surgery: whether she can choose, against her programming, to protect Zane, the boy she loves, and to see what the cities are doing to their citizens. The trilogy’s final book is really about whether identity can be engineered, and whether people can change their own minds.
Beauty, Surgery and Today
Westerfeld published the series in the mid-2000s, before social-media filters, yet its central idea, a society in which everyone is surgically made beautiful and docile at sixteen, feels more pointed every year. The books ask what we lose when we accept an ideal of beauty chosen by someone else, and they invite teenagers to think critically about images and bodies.
After the Trilogy
Westerfeld added a fourth novel, Extras (2007), set in a city obsessed with fame and ratings, and later returned to the world with a new series beginning with Impostors. A film adaptation of Uglies reached Netflix in 2024. The original three books remain the core, and they should be read in order.
Who Will Enjoy It
Fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent looking for something faster and stranger, and teenagers interested in science, technology and ethics.
A Satisfying Ending
Without giving too much away, the last pages close Tally’s story in a way that is both hopeful and uneasy, leaving readers to decide whether freedom is worth its risks.
Why Read It Now
The series raises questions and forces you to reflect on the meaning of beauty, individuality and betrayal. Read the books in order, Uglies, Pretties, then Specials, to feel the full weight of what Tally has become; the companion novel Extras extends the world further.
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