48 Hour Sit-Down

Well, I have finished the series with the final book Specials in 48 hours. Not my record time for finishing a 372 page novel but a good mark for me none-the-less. But I must stress the point that I wasn't trying to beat a record; the style of writing and action in it keeps the pages turning without a conscious effort. But let's pick up where I left off:
Tally Youngblood gets the operation. We are let into the Pretty world as she has just began experiencing the perks and excitement she witnessed from across the river. But as luck, and Scott Westerfield would have it, her fun doesn't last more than a month. A surprising visitor comes to fulfill the second half of the plan to cure the Pretties and Tally Youngblood.
Again with all the twists and turns you would expect, the reader is led through a maze of emotions and obstacles and new romances as Tally learns that there was no cure that changed her in the beginning and no cure was needed to change her as a Pretty: she was the cure. Her ability to change from within was visible to all but herself. Meeting up with old friends and making some new, Tally recruits other Pretties in her attempt to free everyone from the dangerous results of the operation. Tally's new love interest, Zane, pays the unfortunate price of getting the wrong end of the cure. Tally must get him to the New Smoke for any hope of saving him. Special Circumstances seems to beat her yet again when they manage to use Zane as a tracking device to chase off any hope of saving him. Tally is shocked when her captor is none-other than Shay, but she's all to different. Shay has become a Special herself. Now one of the main leaders in a Special Circumstance division known as Cutters, Shay's appearance has been drastically altered. Her bones are made of indistructible ceramic, her eyes sharpened, skin tatoos covering her body, her teeth and nails filed down to deadly weapons. By the novels end, Tally shares her fate.

The third and final installment, Specials, begins with Tally and her new transformation. Senses hightened and strength intensified, she has become a Special, a Cutter. Tricked out with the highest forms of technology, she is equipped with infared vision, an internalized network of communication with the other cutters and the city interface making her a living computer. She has been recruited to capture any run-a-ways and left over smokies infiltrating the city and dispensing the cure to pretties and uglies alike. Their first attempt leads them into an ambush and into the onset of chaos that would become the rest of the novel. Shay and Tally vow a secretive revenge upon the New Smokies and to rescue their kidnapped friend Fausto. In the midst, Tally also finds out that Zane was back in New Prettytown but was helping the Cure spread. In an attempt to save his slowly deteriorating brain as a result of taking the wrong pill for the cure, Tally and Shay send him as bait yet again. The only problem is that Zane has been fitted with an interface necklace that keeps him from leaving the City. Tally and Shay break into the City's armory to retrieve a special alloy cutter to free zane. In the process, they manage to single handedly destroy the entire armory in one hour. Racing back to Zane, freeing him, and setting him off into the wild with his crew of Crims, Tally and Shay cloak themselves and follow. After a debate and argument, Shay goes on ahead towards the New Smoke as she had found a new lead. Tally stays behind to keep an eye on Zane. Getting to close to camp, Zane realizes he's being watched and realizes it's Tally. Trying to get her to change herself yet again, Zane kisses Tally leading to her physical convulsion of disgust (a side effect of being Special). This is the last time Tally is with Zane. They eventually reach the New Smokie only to learn that it is in actuality a City. The City had always been open to Run-a-aways and when they began to spread the cure, the city turned in on itself and was a safe haven for pretties, uglies and run-a-ways all together. Tally's haunting and deformed appearance sends fear into none of the residents as they are not under the same braind damage as the Pretties in New Prettytown. Tally is relieved when she sees Zane going to the City Hospital to hopefully be finally cured and brought back to his old self. She is also relieved to see Fausto racing towards her. But there is something different about him, he is no longer Special. They cured him to. As she realizes this, she realizes that they are about to ambush her again and cure her. She manages to escape but is captured by City Wardens and taken to the hospital. When she re-awakes she is locked in a padded cell. The doctors inform her that she will have to undergo an reversing operation to take away everything that made her Special. While lying on the operation table, she is abrubtly awaken by Shay racing in and injecting her with adrenaline. They run out of the hospital and when her senses are fulling regained, Tally notices that there is something horrible wrong. The city is under attack. But there is something else wrong as well, Shay is different- no longer Special. After struggling to free herself from Shay's grasp, she is informed by Shay and all of the other once-Specials that their old city has started a war on the new City (which is named Diego by the way), blaming them for the destruction of the Armory (the one Shay and Tally destroyed). Shay also explains that they will not turn Tally back into a non-special because they need her to explain to Dr.Cable (The head of the Special Commitee) that it was she who started this non-war. Tally agrees and is only motivated to do so when she rushes into the hospital (after the bombarment and war has ceased for a moment) and sees Zane in the hospital bed, dead.
Racing back to New Prettytown to confront Dr.Cable one last time, she is surprised to recieve a message from David. He is waiting for her in the ruins. In his hands is an injector with the cure for herself. He tells her to take it, she may need it. Placing it in her pocket he lets her leave back to the city telling her that she's never alone. Making it back into the city, she is surprised to learn that Dr.Cable had known all along that it was Tally and Shay that destroyed the armory but used it as an excuse to attack Diego. Dr. Cable was tired of its open mindedness and constant threat to her mission. Tally's quick thinking successfully led Dr.Cable to believe that Tally was transmitting Dr.Cable's admission of this all over the Cities by means of a little transmitter (the injector in her hand). With one lunge, Dr.Cable is stuck with the cure, unbeknown to her of course. Captured yet again, Tally is trapped into a cell. She slowly witnesses Dr.Cables transformation; she sees that Dr.Cable's attempts have failed as the city has dismissed the allegation of Diego being an enemy and the cure being spread to all.
Tally is told then, that every dangerous operation performed under Dr.Cable's care must be reversed, including Tally. As they fill her cell with sleeping gas, a voice comes over Tally's wireless network telling her to pretend to pass out and let them take her out of the room. Tally obeys and is led to the operating room; placed on the table; stuck with needles; forced to breathe through a breathing tube and engulfed in a viscous vat of clear liquid filled with congealing nano's to keep the bleeding during the operation minimal, Tally is left waiting for her savior. Finally emerging and pummeling the doctors, Tally frees herself and surprised to learn that her savior is not David or Shay but Dr.Cable herself. The cure fully changed Dr. Cable and has led her to save Tally so that her creation would not be extinct. Tally was the last Special. Escaping from the hospital and back to the Ruins, Tally waits for David. Upon his arrival she makes the decision not to go back to Diego to help Shay and the rest of the New Smokies. She and David decide to stay in the wild and make sure that what led to the destruction of the world 300 years ago (our century) would not happen again now that the haze had been taken from the people. Her Manifesto ends the book with a warning to them all and effectively to us. As the last Special she warns:
So from now on, David and I are here to stand in your way. You see, freedom has a way of destroying things. You have your New Smokes, your new ideas, whole new cities and New Systems. Well... we're the new Special Circumstances. However hungry the human race becomes now that the pretties are waking up, the wild still has teeth, Special teeth, ugly teeth. Us. Be careful with the world, or the next time we meet, it might get ugly. -Tally Youngblood

In all, an excellent excellent series. There is another book printed as a supplement but from the POV of another girl in which we see Tally through her eyes. I think that I know who this girl is seeing that there is an appearance of such a girl in this novel.

I highly suggest you all looking into it and reading it for yourselves.

Alright..... That's all for now. 40 mins of typing hurts! Even for an English Major!