Review: Divergent

Divergent by Veronica Roth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Hard to decide if Divergent was a 3-star or a 4-star book. I've read a lot of books that I'd describe as being a lot better, and yet I finished Divergent in a day. There are a lot of inspiring ideas in there, and I'd highly recommend it to any reader of young adult books, as long as they have a fairly strong stomach (there's a lot of violence).

The main thing that seemed silly to me was the existence of the factions -- which is to say, the premise on which the whole book is built. I still don't find it easy at all to believe that this system would grow up in post-apocalyptic Chicago (or post-apocalyptic anywhere). But the world of the story works exactly the way it would work if our world somehow developed into the world of the factions; people's reactions to it, individually and in groups, feel completely real.

The Dauntless, in particular, are good for psyching yourself up to do things; it seems very worthwhile to work hard to be like them. In fact, for each of the faction virtues, Roth paints a very clear picture of how it can be hard work to live up to the virtue, while at the same time it's the obvious driving force in your own life. Because sixteen-year-olds choose their factions, they know that the virtue they're trying to cultivate is their inner focus, not only the focus of their community, but that doesn't mean it comes easy.

As I keep ending up saying, this is a book that uses some well-worn post-apocalyptic tropes (the familiar-yet-unfamiliar city, the societally mandated coming-of-age ceremony, the completely vague but oppressive danger, the conspiracy discovered by kids) to do some very good things. To me, it seems that the main point is to challenge our assumption that something is not for us just because it's hard.

I thought the setting and the characters were a great deal stronger than the plot; the main thing the plot did for me was to keep us moving, meeting and exploring new parts of the book's world.



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