Extras – Hidden Aliens

After finishing the last book, Specials, I thought maybe this is a good ending to the series. The world is no longer divided based on appearance and no one is getting their brains altered for the surgeries. All thanks to Tally Youngblood who surprisingly chose to stay as a Special. She has managed to think like her genuine self once again, but she still occasionally is known to have the urges that come with being a Special.

No, it continues from there and this time the focus is located in Japan.

Did this series suddenly turn into an anime story or something? I should have known that beforehand. In the last three books I had no idea where in the world it was at.

In Japan, instead of everyone living freely, people have something called face ranks. The lower the number on your rank, the more famous you are. Aya Fuse, our protagonist, is one of the unlucky ones whose rank is way over the thousands that no one knows her. But, she is a kicker, which is like a journalist, and she hopes to publish a story that will catapult her to fame. Her older brother Hiro is already there; as soon as I saw the name Hiro I realized that this is definitely in Japan.

The characters were easily forgettable for me: Frizz and his brain surgery that makes him never lie, Hiro being too much like the stereotypical big brother, Ren the tech-savvy guy, that’s pretty much it. Aya didn’t interest me much as a protagonist.

Now the plot unfolds from her trying to kick a good story to discovering the real danger it poses and now there are aliens on Earth that are the real Extras. That was where I lost track of the plot, even when it did bring back characters from the previous books, including Tally herself.

The ending left me with questions, like where did Tally and David slip away to? It made me wonder when the former chose to stay in the wild with him, did they reconcile? Back in the first book, Tally and David developed feelings for each other, and then they’re separated at the end. So, do they get back together even if Tally is still a Special and David has never changed?

I already knew Frizz and Aya would be together the moment they met. That is what happens when you read these books like these too frequently.

Overall, this was an okay volume, but I didn’t think it was necessary at this point; it’s a whole different scenario that I couldn’t follow as well as the last one.

👽Emily