Review: Impostors

Impostors by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was pretty surprised when Westerfeld announced that there would be not only this extension to the Uglies series, but that it would be the first of a new four-part sequel/spinoff series. It's for sure the best book Westerfeld wrote in this universe since the original - especially since Specials and especially Extras played out increasingly nonsensically and weirdly, though I'm sure I'd appreciate them better on a second read.

As for this first of the new series, it's not half-bad, but sure as hell doesn't hold a candle to the original. (Fun fact: as I typed that last sentence, a candle appeared on my TV screen in the background from the title sequence of American Horror Story: Apocalypse.) The premise is a promising one, with the idea of identical twins and body doubles, but in practice it feels a little half-baked because we're led to believe that there are bunches of "First Families" making use of this method and it seems, instead, it's just Frey and Rafi. Though this is supposed to be well after the original series ended, it still seems that there are a ton of Pretties and Specials running around, and copious use of silly "bubbly" slang and all those infamous crappy MREs (SpagBol, of course, being the most common.) So while I'm sure there's something to be said for next to nothing having actually changed - Pierce Brown and Tahereh Mafi explored similar themes in their own dystopian series continuations this year - here, it just feels a little underdone, and it's very hard to connect with most of the characters as a result.

Though, again, that's probably the point, because Frey needs to really learn how to be herself, if you know what I mean. And for the less-than-stellar worldbuilding (honestly, I managed to fool myself into thinking most of the book takes place in Europe for the longest time), Westerfeld does make up for it with some kickass action, easily outclassing any such scenes the original series ever had.

So I'm for sure not done with Impostors, but I'm hoping for a better book next year. And that we get some of Col Palafox's multilingual POV. (Also, who else sees him and his name and thinks of Cal from Red Queen?)

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