Pretties

#477
Title: Pretties
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Year: 2005
370 pages

Part 2 of the series, and weaker. The plot is quite similar to that of the first book, and the characters don't seem to have grown emotionally or matured. This may be chalked up to the brain lesions introduced in the first book, but it's still tedious. This volume seems more superficial even as it raises issues like self-mutilation that, while important to the plot, are not adequately resolved. Think of this volume as a bridge to part 3, and possibly as the shadow of a treatise on cognitive therapy.