Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent (Divergent #1)
By Veronica Roth
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased

To Sum It Up: As the day approaches when Beatrice Prior must decide whether or not to remain with the faction she was born into, she worries that she does not possess the selflessness that embodies Abnegation. When the time arrives to make the choice that will determine her future, Beatrice opts for a life that is vastly different from the one she knew. Now calling herself Tris, her initiation is grueling, and she carries an extra burden—a secret about herself that is so dangerous, it could get her killed.

Review: Heavily hyped books bring high expectations, and Divergent is one of the most talked about titles I can think of in recent memory. I am extremely late to the Divergent party, despite the fact that I purchased a copy of the novel not too long after its release, having been persuaded to do so by said hype. I always get a little nervous before reading books with massive fandoms; I know it’s silly, but when an über popular book doesn’t work out for me, I think, “But everyone else loved it!” Unfortunately, Divergent left me questioning what I missed that so, so many other readers adored about it. So if this happens to be one of your favorite books, you might want to skip the rest of this review.

At first I found the social structure of the world intriguing; there are five factions, each associated with a particular attribute: Candor (honesty), Abnegation (selflessness), Amity (peace), Erudite (intelligence), and Dauntless (bravery). I also thought it was interesting how faction members could be identified by how they dressed (plain gray garb for Abnegation, for instance). As I continued reading, however, I found myself looking for more depth to the world-building than clothing descriptions and the characters acting a certain way depending on their faction (Abnegation willingly give up their seats on the bus, Dauntless jump on and off moving trains, etc.). The world never seemed fully fleshed out, and I also had a lot of trouble buying that it ever came into existence in the first place.

The more I thought about this society, the more its plausibility bothered me. The formation of the factions has supposedly resulted in years of peace, and I struggle to see how that’s possible. I just don’t think it’s so easy to compartmentalize people like that. Tris’s conflict is that she doesn’t neatly fit into any one faction, and it kind of boggles my mind that this isn’t a much more common occurrence. I can’t imagine my life revolving around a single trait, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t wrap my head around the way this world operated.

Beatrice/Tris presented another problem for me; her character seemed all over the place, sometimes lacking confidence and other times arrogant. I never felt any sympathy for her troubles; I never connected with her, period. I thought the book tried too hard to portray her as a badass heroine, and I’m sorry, but it takes more than getting a few tattoos and leaping from a rooftop to convince me that you’re a badass heroine. Something that I think contributed to the distance between Tris as a narrator and me as a reader was the prose. It just sounded choppy in my head, and it was almost as though the book had an aversion to using contractions, not so much in the dialogue but in Tris’s narration.

Some of Tris’s fellow initiates, like Christina and Will, fared slightly better in the character development department, but in the end, none truly stood out. Tris’s attitude toward them sometimes really annoyed me; one minute she’d consider them her friends, the next she’d be thinking not-so-friendly thoughts about them. As for the famous Four, he has a rather compelling backstory, but like the rest of the characters, he just didn’t make an indelible impression.

I will give Divergent credit for some intense action scenes, especially during Tris’s punishing initiation. Those were quite engrossing to read; if only the rest of the novel had been that engaging. Overall I was not wowed by this, as much as I tried to give it a chance to awe me the way it has its legion of devoted fans.

All in All: At last I can say that I’ve read Divergent. It didn’t go as I’d hoped, though, and at the moment I’m really hesitant to continue the series.