Divergent (Divergent, #1) in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

Mar 16, 2012 Chris rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, fiction, united-states, youth, dystopia, series, middle-grades, young-adult

Imagine a world.... No, make it easier. Imagine Chicago... because in this dystopia that's all there appears to be, Chicago. So imagine dystopian Chicago (that shouldn't be too hard). Everyone belongs to one of five factions: Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the fearless), Erudite (the intelligent, or if you prefer, the humorless), Candor (they wear only black and white and cannot tell a lie), and Amity (the friendly people). But you don't have to pay attention to the last two. They really Imagine a world.... No, make it easier. Imagine Chicago... because in this dystopia that's all there appears to be, Chicago. So imagine dystopian Chicago (that shouldn't be too hard). Everyone belongs to one of five factions: Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the fearless), Erudite (the intelligent, or if you prefer, the humorless), Candor (they wear only black and white and cannot tell a lie), and Amity (the friendly people). But you don't have to pay attention to the last two. They really don't have much to do with this story. The author must have added them because three factions didn't seem like enough.
In this world you are born and raised in a faction, focusing only on that faction's particular virtue. If you are in Abnegation, you take the stairs so there's more room in the elevator. If you're in Dauntless, you travel by jumping on and off moving trains because--well, just because it's a cool thing to do. Then when you turn 16, you get to pick which faction you will spend the rest of your life with. Pick differently than what you were born as and you say goodbye to your family forever. As the motto of this dystopia goes, "Faction Over Family."
It's pretty easy to make fun of the premise of this book. But the truth is I really enjoyed it. I liked the characters and the way the story came together.
When Beatrice Prior, a young member of Abnegation, takes an apptitude test to see which faction she fits with best, the results show she has tendencies toward more than one faction. She is "divergent." She is told that is a very bad thing and not to tell anyone. Her results are falsified. She chooses to join the Dauntless faction.
Here the book stretches into Hunger Games territory. The training to be accepted into Dauntless is fierce and violent, sometimes deadly. There are also deadly games going one elsewhere as the factions are beginning to snipe at one another. Beatrice, now Trice, must overcome her fears, find out who the bad guys are, figure out why being divergent could get her killed, protect her family, and win the heart of her instructor. No worries. The plot builds to a satisfying climax while still leaving plenty of room for more in the next book.
Roth does a pretty good job of working within the restrictions she's set for herself. Still there are a lot of questions I'd like to ask: Why don't the factionless (those who don't get accepted into a faction) form their own faction? Why does no one seem to have grandparents? And where the heck are all those trains going to anyhow?
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Dec 26, 2013 Amanda rated it it was amazing

My students told me about this book,and a couple said it was better than Hunger Games. At first I was skeptical about how something could be better than Hunger Games with such an amazing character as Katniss. But then there was Tris. Amazing female lead. Looking forward to the rest of the series. :)

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