Divergent

Well... Surprisingly, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought. BUT it doesnt mean that I enjoyed it a lot. I was entertained, you may say. I started to read this book with such low expectations, so it worked for me. I wasnt very dissapointed, neither I was surprised by the plot or the characters. It was just a fun read, nothing more than that.
P. S. Yeah, I admit, this book has a lot of plot holes and stupid things in it, but... Oh god, how refreshing it was to read about a romance (sometimes VERY stupid) and not about A FREAKING LOVE TRIANGLE AGAIN.

Actual rate: 4,5 put of 5 stars

I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK.

I already liked the movies, but I never actually read the book. The book is so much better as usual, but I really enjoyed it. It felt real and good and I just loved it
Christina is one of my favorite characters in the movie, but I really disliked her for being so jealous and disrespectful to tris. I do really love four and tris and I totally ship them!

I enjoyed this book up until the end. When I say this, I truly mean it, but unfortunately it ended so abruptly that I kept flipping the pages on my iPad thinking that I had missed something or part of the book ( I am not ashamed to say this has happened before). It certainly made me want to pick up the second book right away but was a little alarming.

I really enjoyed this. I spent a lot of the book trying to figure out where it was going, and what its political motivation is – dystopian futures rarely lack some political motivation. So far, the only messages I can tell are basic, moral, principles, not political ideologies. Which I like. I think there were hints dropped earlier on that in retrospect were intentional red herrings as far as the intent/plot of the book. I was trying to turn it into The Giver, or something along those lines, and trying to determine the moral lessons I should be learning from all of the factions, which ones were good and bad, etc, and while it shared some themes with overt allegories like The Giver and 1984, it's definitely its own thing and a lot more than it initially appears to be.

I also found the love interest plotline seemed to be a much more convincing version of Twilight's. I only read the first Twilight, because it was a garbage book, but it seems to me (as a straight man, obviously not the main target here) that this book did a much better job of a similar thing: the characters are obviously drawn to each other. There's a lot of noticing of clavicles, and tensing of muscles, etc etc, but the characters are a lot more fleshed out and even the attraction feels a lot more convincing. I enjoyed it, and I also enjoyed that (like many other YA/children's series with love stories) it wasn't all about that. It played a part, and did a good job, but it didn't detract from (or attempt to distract from) the larger plot.

I'm really looking forward to picking up the next one.



== Spoilers ==
Spoiler
The ending felt like it didn't live up to what the book had put together – it felt like I, Robot (the movie) or any number of other sci-fi plots, when the book had developed a pretty interesting world and a unique economy and political system. Not only did the whole mind control thing feel like Will Smith battling robots, but the themes were echoed in the lead Erudite doing it all seemingly in the name of logic, and a number of other things. I hate to keep using a Will Smith mis-adaptation of Asimov as an example, especially since I know I've seen this storyline before, but it's all I'm coming up with right now. I'm fine with that plot, mostly - I enjoyed the movie, too, mostly – I just felt like the book set it up for more.

Beyond that, the book seemed to fall apart a little for other reasons here: you have trouble controlling divergents, and you decide the thing to do is send one you're probably controlling to be like the only guy in charge of your quest for Chicago domination? I don't know. I still liked it, and I'm excited to see what happens next, but I do think there was a lot of smarter stuff in the book before Roth had to conclude the first story arc.

A page-turning formulaic young adult novel featuring a lead young female protagonist that has been extremely successful. They are making it into a movie and the novel leaves plenty of room to imagine what each and every character might actually be like so I suppose that made the writers and director happy. The dystopian future is a world divided up into factions based on general traits (the really smart faction, the truth-telling faction, the brave faction, the selfless faction). Kids chose factions when they are 16. This first book spends all its time in the long initiation rites for the main character's chosen faction. No old people in these worlds. I guess they are all dead or extremely quiet and inconsequential.

I do not think this is really a “good” dystopia novel. I had some issues with the plot and the fact that you'd have to suspend a LOT of belief in order to imagine a world like this ever happening. (The reason the world is terrible is because we're not courageous enough? Please.). I didn't think Tris was that likeable of a character. I hated that sections of it felt ripped straight from Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. I don't particularly think Veronica Roth is a great writer.

All that said, I found it entertaining and I had a hard time putting it down. By that merit, I give it three and a half stars. And now I want to know what happens, so I will probably read the other books in the series too.

Do yourself a favour. If you choose to read this book, stop here.
This has about as good an ending as you're going to get, they left the city and made their own way in the lands outside the fence, faced man and nature and themselves and all that, overcame obstacles and took risks, and they lived interestingly every after.
Trust me. It's better this way.
If you really want to read the rest of the trilogy you're better off writing it yourself.

I only say this because this book in particular is actually a little fun and interesting as a light read. Kind of a Hunger Games meets Enders Game in my opinion (because the compound parts totally read like Ender, obviously Ender is wayyyyyy better written. Hunger Games is not a well written book by any means, but this has an eerily similar feel -to this day I swear it was written for the sole purpose of becoming a movie, like writing the movie novelization before the movie even gets made so that people will actually read it-)

Veronica Roth does have some great potential, her ideas are interesting and well worth pursuing. I look forward to better development and execution of those ideas in the future.

I quite enjoyed this book. I finished it in a few days and I've started the second in the series. It's pretty standard YA strong female first-person fare, but what sets Divergent apart is the world that Veronica Roth has created. Sure, one can draw up parallels to Hunger Games (which many consider a rip off of Battle Royale)dystopic future world, factionized societies, etc, but while Hunger Games is vague, Divergent sets itself up in the heart of Chicago, a warning to us from the future of what might come to our society.
I like that while the story is societally futuristic, not much else is far beyond the realm of current science and technology. It is easy to see how this world came to be.
For me to keep reading I don't necessarily have to feel a kinship with the characters or even be invested in them (I spent much of HG wanting to smack Katniss across the face) but I have to be interested in the world in which they live-is it complete? Can I imagine myself living there? Are there weaknesses to the world they've created? In Divergent, it's Chicago, my home town, so I'm already invested, but the world created by Roth is quite complete-at least within the confines of the city. It doesn't feel contrived that the protagonist, Tris doesn't know, since the city and its factions are very insular. I do find myself wonder what is going on elsewhere in the world, hoping that the sequels will satisfy this question.
We follow Tris through her journey from choosing a faction, to initiate and after. I'm being purposefully vague about this. If you want to know I don't want to ruin your excitement when you are about to discover it in the book. On the whole, Tris is very human and likeable for it. Even she wonders about her thoughts and actions, which makes her more likable than other characters in other books.
I won't go into any more, but I did enjoy the first book enough to purchase book 2 right after finishing. I just had to know what will happen next. Sure some of the book is heavy with foreshadowing and a good reader can see some things coming, but they aren't blatant to the point where you are bored by the time they happen. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes post-apocalyptic worlds, societal struggles and general YA science fiction.