Review Detail

Reader reviewed by mlecompt

This book is set about three years after Specials. Aya lives in a world where popularity is key. Your face rank is the key to economic easy street. Aya is ranked pretty low and wants to push herself into the top tier, so she scouts out a story on the Sly Girls. The Sly Girls take thrill ride on the top of trains, but don't want anyone to know about them. After infiltrating the group, Aya thinks she has a great story, but then they stumble upon something even bigger. Strange-looking being are stashing something inside of a mountain near Aya's city. Are they dangerous? The Sly Girls investigate and Aya gets a story that might make her super-famous.

This book got off to a slow start. I thought the parts about riding on top of the train were a little boring and the Sly Girls are really just a device to launch the rest of the story. However, once the real story gets going it is very page-turning. The idea of popularity as currency is very interesting and Westerfeld provides a lot of real world parallels like kicking stories out to feeds (posting major stories on blogs). Worth a read if you have read the Uglies series.