I'm Not Pretties Ugies I Am Extras Specials

Ok so maybe the post title is a stretch, but I tried :-)  Lets finish this series off shall we.  We have covered Uglies and Pretties and in this post I will cover both Specials and Extras

We start off Specials right after our heroine Tally Youngblood has been converted into a Special along with her friend Shay and her merry band of Cutters.  Specials are altered Pretties that have been given borderline weapon grade enhancements to act as a sort of Secret Service/Enforcer squad.  They are described as being terrible and beautiful all at the same time sort of predatory.  The Specials infiltrate an Ugly dance and discover people from Smoke (the rebel town) slipping pills to one of the kids.
The Specials follow them and are ambushed by a bunch of Smokies who utilize sneak suits.  After a lovely little chase, threatening of people and so forth they discover the pills were meant for Zane, who's brain had been damaged in the previous book.  Tally is pissed that Zane got taken back to New Pretty instead of made into a Special so she devises a way to break him out and take him to Smoke to get cured.  She plans on then "recapturing" him and taking him to Dr. Cable to be made into a Special.  Plans go awry when the locators the Smokies have been handing out to people looking to run away do not lead to Smoke Town, but to an extraction point where a helicopter comes and takes you to the secret location.  Tally hitches a ride on the helicopter and finds that Smoke is now located in a city called Diego which does not put the brain lesion on there citizens.  The people of Diego are not nearly as tightly controlled as the people in Tally's home city.  Tally and Shay's city decides to attack Diego and Shay who has been cured of her Special (I hope that sentence makes sense) tries to get Tally to do the same.  Tally is injured in a fight and is captured and taken to be
cured.  Shay intervenes and convinces them to let Tally stay Special to help them in their fight.  They agree as long as some of the more weaponized enhancements are taken off.  Tally goes to say good-bye to Zane who's brain has been to damaged to recover.  She tricks Dr. Cable into taking the Specials cure and leaves with David into the woods. The cities become less restrictive and people are given more choices without the pacifying brain lesion.  The cities start expanding and the woods start being deforested and Tally and David decide to try and remind people not to go so far with there freedoms that they destroy the world as they did before.
I like this book ok, it seemed a bit repetitive, a lot of the same plot devices had been used in the last two books.  I did like the very end when Tally tells us that freedom is very important, but the reason the cities got to the way they were in the first place was because of the wanton destruction of resources.  The message seems to be no one idea is perfect and you need to find a balance, which is a good message.

Quick and dirty Extras summary.  This one is set in Japan which makes for a nice change of pace.  Aya is a girl who has not had her Pretty surgery yet. This economy is based on popularity, with the higher your ranking the more you are entitled to, everybody under a certain number is referred to as an Extra.  Everybody is wired into a feed that is basically Facebook on steroids.  Aya has a camera and is looking for a story big enough to boost her into the top 1000 faces.  She ends up infiltrating a group called the Sly Girls and covertly tapes them and there pranks for a story.  On one prank they run into alien like creatures and what looks to be a massive weapon.  Aya breaks her story and is launched to #17 in the faces and is
enjoying the perks.  She is contacted by Tally Youngblood from the earlier books and meets up with her.  They find that the aliens were actually humans who have modified themselves to live in space to help relieve the overcrowding of Earth.  Some of Aya's friends decide to go with them.  The book ends with Aya at #3 in face rankings enjoying herself at a party, camera ever ready to capture her next story.
This book was fun, but it did not fit into the other three as well as I would have liked.  It was nice to have a different setting and the concepts were cool, but I still liked the other three better.

What book was your favorite?  What "enhancements" would you like?  What is the right balance between freedom and protection?  Would you transform into an "alien" to live in space?