Uglies by Scott Westerfield

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Publication Date: February 8th 2005
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing
ISBN:  0689865384
Age Group: Young Adult
Genre: Adventure/Action/Dystopian
Source: Borrowed
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Lootability: ****

Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that? Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there. But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

I've really gotten into dystopian literature in the last year or so, and while I've been searching for more, I kept hearing about Westerfield's Uglies trilogy. Having read his novel So Yesterday a few years back, I decided to give it a try.

Ice Station by Matthew Reilly

#48 of 200

Original Language: English
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Country: Australia
Publication Date: August 1, 1998
ISBN: 0330360892
Page Count: 611

Anarctica is the last unconquered continent, a murderous expanse of howling winds, blinding whiteouts and deadly crevasses. On one edge of Antarctica is Wilkes Station. Beneath Wilkes Station is the gate to hell itself... A team of U.S. divers, exploring three thousand feet beneath the ice shelf has vanished. Sending out an SOS, Wilkes draws a rapid deployment team of Marines-and someone else... First comes a horrific firefight. Then comes a plunge into a drowning pool filled with killer whales. Next comes the hard part, as a handful of survivors begin an electrifying, red-hot, non-stop battle of survival across the continent and against wave after wave of elite military assassins-who've all come for one thing: a secret buried deep beneath the ice...

Matthew Reilly brings exhilaration, endurance and science together in the adventure riddled novel. Ice Station  is the first in Reilly's adrenaline pumping Scarecrow series and definitely kicks off with a splash.