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Shay's Story: Uglies    by Scott Westerfeld, Devin Greyson & Steven Cummings Amazon.com order for
Shay's Story
by Scott Westerfeld
Order:  USA  Can
Del Rey, 2012 (2012)
Softcover

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* * *   Reviewed by Ricki Marking-Camuto

Scott Westerfeld's Uglies was the first YA dystopian I ever read (before the whole craze hit), so I was excited to see that he was returning to this world, but this time in graphic novel format.

The title of the graphic novel is Shay's Story, and that is exactly what it is. Westerfeld, along with co-writer Devin Grayson, tells the story of how Shay came to the Smoke, a rebellious commune which Special Circumstances has been trying to find.

Shay's Story is very fast-paced, with the perfect blend of narration and dialogue. And while Steven Cummings' illustrations have a wonderful manga feel to them, the one criticism I have is that the pretties look no better than the uglies. Everyone is cute, which is rather common in manga, but there needs to be more of a delineation in a story set in a world where everyone is given an operation at age sixteen to make them pretty.

That minor point aside, Shay's Story is a wonderful tale that fans of the series will want to grab and also a great introduction to the Uglies world for newcomers.

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