Divergent

Divergent – Veronica Roth

Tris lives in a world with clear boundaries and expectations. Five factions share the city, each characterized by a specific trait. Amity seek peace and harmony, Abnegation put all others first, Dauntless have bravery and courage, Candor embrace honesty, and Erudite seek knowledge. Children grow up learning the lifestyle of their faction, but they all take an aptitude test to help them decide which faction they will spend the rest of their life in. Tris’ test results are ambiguous, making her Divergent. Though no one will clarify what this means, she knows it is a threat and must be kept secret, so Tris chooses to be Dauntless, and excels at the initiation training for her new faction. However, her awareness of difference heightens her ability to detect subtle behaviors that don’t quite match up with expectations. Unfortunately, Tris realizes the threat too late, and by the time she figures out that someone has been making secret plans, factions have already collided to throw the city into panic and chaos. With no certainty as to who is an ally and how to stop the rebellion, Tris throws herself into battle fighting for the only thing she believes in – protecting the people she loves.

“Divergent,” by Veronica Roth, is an incredibly fast-paced book. Chapters are short and easily digestible, making it almost impossible to read one at a time. Although most of the book focuses on Tris’ training as an initiate into the Dauntless faction, it never seems dull or tedious. Roth adds enough variety to move the plot along quickly while also developing characters and storylines that I assume will have much more significance in future books. She also leaves enough questions unanswered to encourage continued reading based on sheer curiosity. Although “Divergent” has overtones of series like The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, and even whispers of Harry Potter, and some of the plotlines, especially the love interest, are entirely expected, Roth has contributed an innovative novel to young adult dystopian reading. Some plot twists were heavily foreshadowed and were thus more or less predictable, but Roth also throws in enough blind curves to keep the storyline surprising and engaging throughout the book.

I was pleasantly surprised by “Divergent.” I thought I had read enough young adult fiction to be able to accurately predict the ending of a book based on the first few chapters. In a way, I still managed to do that with “Divergent,” but there were enough unexpected and surprising events that I was hooked throughout the entire book. However, I had a hard time with the level of violence. Let’s face it – I would undoubtedly by in Amity, which is the polar opposite of Dauntless. Occasionally, I felt the level of detail describing fights and injuries was a little unnecessary. In general, I remain pleasantly surprised – both because Roth was able to do something new with young adult dystopian fiction and also because I was sucked in by the pace of the books. Fun reading for sure.