Duckling Ugly (Dark Fusion Series #3) Book

It's official: I have become a total Neal Shusterman addict. If he wrote it, then I need to read it. No one offers more intense, surprising mystery in his or her books than Neal Shusterman; he is a brilliant plot strategist who can maintain a rising level of suspense and storyline intrigue like few other writers of modern times, and it is always a treat to watch how his mind works in the construction of a masterful and psychologically stunning new novel.

As for ranking the three Dark Fusion installments in order of quality, I'd have to put Dread Locks first, followed by this book as the second-best entry in the trilogy. The story turns on a dime and unexpected developments leap out from around every corner, but in my estimation the best thing about Duckling Ugly is the incredible richness of deeper thought that it reveals, touching on all corners of the human experience to create a story to which anyone will be able to relate. Neal Shusterman does a marvelous job of delving into our thoughts, and the thoughts of society as a whole, about what beauty really is, and how our views on it always carry the potential for massive shift as relates to the prism through which we collectively view such matters. What does beauty, and agelessness, and physical perfection actually mean? Is it not reaching for that which will elevate us higher than the endless sea of other human beings also looking for attention? Isn't it our way of finding personal significance amidst the mundaneness of the everyday world, so that we, and the people we know or want to know, will see us as special? Yet, what if the paradigm of beauty and perfection were to shift, and the traits considered now to be indicative of exceptional beauty were to lose value? Would not the entire idea of beauty change like an unstable stock market, raising up new attributes as being desirable to replace the old? At heart, Neal Shusterman is a philosopher of the highest order, and he really spins one's head around in this book. if you always keep an open mind when beginning to read, then you might want to buckle up before cracking the binding on Duckling Ugly.

"Fairytale ugliness", so to speak, is often different from ugliness in real life. For instance, how many times in recorded history has a mirror actually broken because it was presented with a disturbingly marred face that it couldn't even bring itself to reflect? Cara De Fido is exactly that kind of "fairytale ugly", though. She has never seen her image in a mirror, having observed her reflection only for brief moments in the still water of lakes and streams; even then, the water becomes cloudy within seconds, as if rebelling against the ghastly image that nature would force it to show. Cara was never in any kind of an accident, and she wasn't damaged during gestation or birth. She's just...ugly, with no more explanation available than that. And, as the opening sections of the book state, nothing is considered more unforgivable on society's most visceral level than ugliness. A homely person might be able to get by on practiced charm or sheer intelligence, but Cara is far beyond homely, and no combination of talent and wit could ever lift her out of the deficit caused by her external appearance.

Life at school is interminably rough, and Cara has little idea of the fact that she's on the verge of an enormous discovery. It's a secret that could blow all preconceived notions of beauty sky high, a secret that could change Cara forever even before she knows she's a candidate for such dramatic transformation. In the real world it may not be true that all ugly ducklings get their chance to become a swan, but for the girl whose face can shatter mirrors, that chance has really, finally come. All she has to do is take it.

There's much more to the secrets that Cara is catching onto than meets the eye; some grand mysteries are about to be solved, and the answers to Cara's questions will yield at least a few major surprises. Honestly, I was more caught off-guard by the revelations in Duckling Ugly than in most of Neal Shusterman's other novels. He designed some twists that I wouldn't have guessed in a hundred years, yet the clues are all there ahead of time and could conceivably be surmised. Leave it to Neal Shusterman to really rock our world with information that's been under our noses the whole time.

While I might not rate this book up there with the greatest masterpieces that Neal Shusterman has authored, it certainly is an extraordinary novel that shows all the earmarks of the unique and powerful Shusterman style. If Duckling Ugly were solely a suspense story with little deeper value, it would still be very much worth taking the time to read. However, there's so much more than just suspense to be found in these pages. This book reaches into the human heart and mind and comes back with both the repulsive and the quintessentially lovely in hand, offering a balanced philosophical interpretation of the good and bad sides of how human beings treat each other. Duckling Ugly isn't the type of book that one dismisses easily after reading; there's a lot of fuel for further thought here, and it will likely keep the engine of the reader's mind stoked red-hot for a long while. As ever is the case, Neal Shusterman has not disappointed, and I am better off for having read this book.