Westerfeld, Scott. Extras. New York City: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 2007. 417 pages. (Sci-Fi)Imagine a place where society is based around fame. Hovercams, personal and commercial, swarm the air capturing every moment. Those with good stories to put on the feeds grow popular. The more a person’s name is said in the city, the higher their face rank and the more power they hold. But not everyone lives like this. There are those who live in obscurity, face ranks in the six digits or more. Extras.
Aya Fuse is an extra, a nobody. The world doesn’t know she exists, but they will. For a couple of day, Aya tracked a secret clique. The Sly Girls. She followed them into a storm drain to an underground lake at a construction site. That’s where the deal was made. Take her hovercam and go home, never to see the Sly Girls again. Or let her hovercam be dropped into the lake and join the Sly Girls. Aya forfeits her hovercam, the only consistent thing in her life. Gone. As her time with the Sly Girls extends, Aya finds herself standing on top of moving magnetic- levitation trains and taking risks she wouldn’t have dreamt of before. But her enjoyment is clouded by the fact that she’s deceiving them. Hovercams and button cams capture every one of their tricks, without them even knowing it. But their little pranks turn into something completely different when they come across a weapon like no other. A weapon to destroy the world. And this city killer is just what Aya needs in order to have the fame she has always wanted.
What a fabulous futuristic book! The imagination that went into this book swept me into the future and into the middle of this fame-crazed city! One thing I really love about this series is that the people of our time are referred to as Rusties. In this series, we almost destroyed our world and wiped out our own species, but some survived and escaped into the wild. This futuristic world is very careful about their environment and not messing with the wild. The thoughts and opinions of Westerfeld are portrayed very obviously in these novels and it puts thought into the readers mind as to what will become of our polluted and damaged earth. It makes for a very interesting read. I recommend to any and all!
Reviewed By: DancingPenguin96
