| Title: | Divergent | |
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| Author: | Veronica Roth | |
| Publication Date: | May 2011 | |
| Publisher's Description | In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself. During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her. |
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| My rating: | ****.5 | |
I love a good dystopian novel, and was interested in Divergent as soon as I read the blurb. Tris was a complex character whose growth over the course of this novel was clear to me, even when she wasn’t sure if the changes she experienced were good. I liked that this book, maybe even more so than the Hunger Games novels, showed that teenagers can be brutal beings on their own right, not only in response to life and death situations. Dauntless didn’t make Peter do the awful things, Peter joined Dauntless because he knew that doing so would give him the opportunity to do awful things. Tris was fierce, in the pre-Project Runway definition of that word. She didn’t take crap from anybody, and constantly did more than people expected her to be able to do. She didn’t magically grow stronger or taller; she used what she had (her small stature, speed, and Abegnation upbringing) to achieve things the others never even considered. Tris was a great protagonist, and the perfect complement to Tobias. I loved that they were each able to be strong for one another when the situation called for it, and that he wasn’t always that one doing the rescuing.
Roth’s world of five factions was well-realized. The book began several generations after whatever war made Chicago turn into this kind of structured/fractured society. I hope that the later books in this series discuss more about how this reality came into being, and about how the factions changed over time to become what they were at the start of Divergent.
Divergent is a great introduction to this series, with enough action that it could be a standalone title, but enough hints at unexplored mysteries to leave me eagerly awaiting the next book.
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