A quick run-down of the plot: the time comes the main character, Beatrice, a.k.a. Tris, to take the faction aptitude test to see if she should stay in her own faction or switch to another. Her results reveal that she is Divergent: uncategorizable, and somehow dangerous. After giving it some thought, she decides to switch to the Dauntless faction and goes through a grueling initiation process, all the while uncovering a plot to overthrow society as she knows it.
The story of Divergent has a lot in common with the Hunger Games: the setting is a self-contained society formed likely after environmental and sociopolitcal disaster on the brink of collapse; the main character is a young woman who calculates every move she makes, whose friends she views as competitors more often than not; and there's plenty of deadly violence involved in the bulk of the story. The differences lie in the premise and the love story: this dystopian society has more obvious social stratification, with individuals divided in five factions, each modeled after a virtue that the faction most values (honesty, kindness, knowledge, selflessness, and courage), and the leftovers are called factionless (basically pariahs who do most of society's dirty work); the love story is your run-of-the mill YA genre love story, both parties uncertain and shy from the start but quickly fall for each other.
The story had a lot of potential; the premise could have taken us to some interesting places, and raise questions about the nature of humanity and society that even teens could pick up on. I was interested enough in what would happen. I kept reading, even as I kept stumbling on bothersome questions of logic and inconsistency, but I didn't care that much about the characters. Everything seemed to happen too fast, in a way that feels kind of arbitrary.
So, first, with the questions: How long ago did they decide that it was a good idea that each faction should just take control of certain sectors of career tracks? And for Abnegation (selfless) to be the only faction in charge of the government? I mean, each faction deserves representation, and Candor represents honesty, so wouldn't that also be valued in government and politics? And Dauntless seems to be a parody of itself when Tris (the heroine) goes through the initation trials: it's all violence and ridiculous derring-do for basically no reason. Why did they have to fight each other so brutally? How quickly did their wounds heal? Why the fuck did they have to cut their palms at the initiation ceremony and there was no mention of a nurse on hand? I mean, it's not like it's a cut like that heals instantly!
More questions arose as I read the story. When Tris's mom comes on Visiting Day, she tells her to stay in the middle of the pack. But then when it comes to the simulation stage of initiation, she goes on to be easily the best, and that doesn't raise red flags? (other than being the target of the comically predictable bullies, yawn) Then love interest Tobias goes and gives her a preview of what's to come in the final stage, giving her a huge leg up in the competition. Playing favorites much? Why does it matter if she's first, if all that matters is that she makes the cut? At least in The Hunger Games, Katniss had to be first, or else she would be killed. And the whole Erudite scheme to use the Dauntless to kill and capture Abnegation felt tacked on, after we've spent all this time on initation and only hints of such an attack here and there. The whole story was a disjointed mess, reeking of first novelism. Especially in the beginning, the boring sentence pattern of "I do this. I do this. Then I do this," reared its ugly head, causing me to skim over to the more interesting parts.
I mentioned earlier that I did not care about the characters. There were some interesting moments, like Tris looking at herself in the mirror in the beginning, the zipline scene, a few of the more tense, intimate moments with Tobias. Roth can paint vibrant scenes and action sequences. But the only remotely fleshed out characters were Tobias and Tris, maybe her mom. The rest, especially the villains, were two-dimensional at most.
Plenty of characters die, but I was neither shocked nor saddened by their deaths. Both her parents die, and she witnesses it, which I felt was a little convenient; she kills her so-called friend Will, I guess so there's some personal conflict to start the next book with; and Al kills himself just when he starts being a jerk, to be swiftly forgotten for most of the rest of the book. (not to mention there's some posthumous shaming involved) Her parents seemed to be emotionally distant from her until towards the end of the book, yet there is no sense of tragedy that she never really knew them. Even her so-called friend Christina, she didn't seem to have a deep connection with. I didn't really get that connection with anyone except Tobias, and yet she claims to love all of these other people? It seems that Roth spent too much time focusing on action and plot rather than developing her characters or forging meaningful connections between them.
Finally, the character of Tris. Why is she so special? Why is being Divergent not a thing? It seems highly improbable, especially among those initiates who decided to change factions, that only about a handful of people in each faction are Divergent. Why is everyone else in Dauntless apparently so dumb? Why does she not think she's pretty, when she's thin and blonde? Does Abnegation have low self-esteem on purpose? (I really hope Shailene Woodley doesn't claim to be not pretty in the movie; what an eye-roller that would be) Why did the people who formed this society think that giving people the choice to leave their faction was a good idea in the first place, if they insist on such rigid conformity to faction norms, and divergence is such a bad thing, anyway?
All right, I'll stop with the questions. There were plenty more, though.
This book wasn't all bad. There were some cool moments and interesting writing, and some allowances can be made for the two-dimensional hero/villian set-up, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Amateur Hour YA is up to snuff for bestseller status. Will I read the second one? Maybe, maybe not. Though I think I'm going back to grown-up novels for a while. Two stars out of five.
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