Book #17: Divergent by Veronica Roth

I finally decided to get around to reading this book after seeing it everywhere. Bethany got it for Christmas and I thought I'd read them too to see what she likes about them. I started this one last night and then read the rest of it this afternoon--it is over 450 pages long but the spacing between the lines are so big that it really goes pretty fast. I feel like I probably skimmed a lot too, but that was because I was itching to figure out what happened in the plot. (I tend to do that when I get involved in a story--I stop reading every word and just look for new developments in the plot. It takes conscious effort for me to slow down.) Anyways, I did get involved in the plot, maybe about halfway through the book. I feel like I liked the book enough to race through it and probably check out the sequels, but I had a number of problems with the fundamental premise of the book though.

The book is set in a dystopian future society (in Chicago) where the entire society is divided into five factions, determined by what each faction thinks is the premiere character quality is most important: Dauntless (bravery), Abnegation (selflessness), Erudite (knowledge), Amity (kindness), and Candor (honesty). At the age of 16, students have to take a test that pronounces toward which quality their natural inclination lies, and after that test, they make a choice of which faction they will join. The story follows Beatrice Prior, who, for some reason, does not fall neatly into one of the categories and is therefore labeled as Divergent.

I just don't really understand or believe the story as it is. First off, why would a future society decide to divide up based on five randomly chosen qualities? And why are they so strict about it? If you fail the initiation into your faction, you become "factionless" and aren't allowed in anywhere. Why not just let them join a different faction? Why can't you switch factions? Also, Beatrice (or Tris, as she chooses to be called), chooses the Dauntless faction, and much of the book shows her going through training and initiation activities, which involves things like jumping on and off moving trains (repeatedly), jumping off buildings, going through mental simulations of your fear, etc. It just seems like those activities are ridiculous and not actually aimed toward instilling bravery in the initiates. All of these fundamental plot points bothered me as I read and didn't seem believable enough to me. Many people compared this book to Hunger Games to me, but I felt like Panem seemed like a much more believable tyranny established instead of this quasi-democratic society established on such thin tenets. Additionally, I didn't love the author's writing style, but that's pretty normal for these YA novels, I feel like (I'm not crazy about Suzanne Collins' writing in HG either).

Like I said, I am still planning on reading the sequels, and I'm interested to see how they turn out.