Review // Divergent

Divergent

by Veronica Roth

It's really hard to sum up dystopian novels in a few sentences, but here we go. Divergent is the story of Beatrice Prior, who lives in a futuristic Chicago. In her world, the people have separated themselves from one mass to five different "factions": Amity the peaceful, Abnegation the selfless, Candor the honest, Dauntless the brave, and Erudite the intelligent. Each faction has its own beliefs about the dystopian "what went wrong", our modern-day society failed, and which values are most important now to make sure their society doesn't.

When the teenagers in this society turn sixteen, they each take an aptitude test to tell them which faction they would best fit with. After the tests, there is a ceremony where they choose a faction to join for life. Most choose to stay in the faction which they were born. Some choose to switch and never see their families again. Beatrice's situation is a little different, though. She's Divergent (clever title), which means her aptitude test results were inconclusive. She can choose to go with the Dauntless or the Erudite, or stay in her family's faction, Abnegation. As the little tagline says, "One choice can transform you." The rest of the story focuses on her fitting in with her faction, making it past initiation, and figuring out what's wrong with the government. Because it wouldn't be dystopian if something wasn't wrong with the government.

The first thing you'll notice when you pick up this book is that it's a sprint from start to finish. Within the first fifty pages, Beatrice has already taken her aptitude test, chosen a faction, and we've gotten most of the background story about this futuristic world. I loved that it was so fast-paced, and the background story didn't seem too needlessly injected into the front half, but I kind of hoped for a little bit more story. It isn't really clear why Chicago has separated into these factions, and we don't really know about any other place except for Chicago. Are there even other cities, or is Chicago the only populated place left in the world? Luckily Divergent is the first in a trilogy, so hopefully we'll get to see some more world development in the second and third book.

The descriptions of Chicago are wonderful. Nothing has really changed, except that everything is divided into factions. Without giving it away, the headquarters of the faction that Beatrice either chooses to join or stays in is just awesome. It reminds me of the senate building in Star Wars, except cooler and more vertical and more nook-and-cranny-ish.

Beatrice, or "Tris" as she goes by, has a great voice. Something that makes her so awesome, and Veronica Roth says so in a little interview in the back of the book, is that Tris is an active character and not a reactive one. She likes to be in control of a situation and proves that she can control what happens to her even if she's not the biggest, strongest, or tallest, she can be the toughest, and it earns her respect from her peers. She's also very dimensional and doesn't really fit into the protagonist stereotypes of "the hero" or "the underdog."

I liked it a whole lot. I was going to wait for the paperback of the second book Insurgent to come out before I bought it, but I don't really want to wait. There's always the library, I guess.

Just so you know, this book is going to be a movie. I can feel it in my knees. Either that or it's going to rain.