Foz Meadows's Reviews > Divergent

** spoiler alert ** I had a very mixed reaction to this book.

On the positive side: The writing was sparse, but very pacey; the characterisation was strong; and there were some genuinely interesting ideas in play. Particularly near the end, Roth doesn't flinch from taking the plot to some dark places, and that's something I'm always going to respect. Tris's transformation from Abnegation to Dauntless felt extremely real to me: I believed in her transition, and I liked the way her inner monologue dealt with that change. The romance wasn't overplayed, the friendship with Christina worked, and the plot moved very smoothly overall, with no lags or bloated sections. Even when something was bugging me, I was always compelled to keep reading; there was definite tension at the pivotal moments, and I'll probably be sticking around for the sequel.

On the negative side: The worldbuilding is... not so much. The setting seemed mostly to exist as a narrative conceit rather than as a real place in its own right, and for me, this created an extreme sense of discontinuity at various points in the book. The simulation that determines faction aptitude, for instance, makes no sense: why does choosing cheese over a knife - cheese, of all things! - mark a person for Amity? Why does every single person go through the same scenario? The test's underlying logic felt very morally and emotionally simplistic, as did the division of the factions themselves - something a management consultant or a pop psychologist might come up with, rather than a viable basis for society.

Then there were logistical questions, omissions and lapses that nagged at me throughout the whole story. What was the city's population? The new intake for Dauntless was only twenty students, some of whom would be cut; additionally, there only seemed to be one high school and one compound for each faction, which suggests a population no bigger than a few thousand. But we never had any sense that this was a small society; rather, that it was so large and well-ordered that the factions had the luxury of staying apart from each other. But if their whole lives ran that way, then how would industry work? We have a vague reference to farms outside the city, but no sense that anyone ever left the walls to harvest from them. I kept wondering, too, why defecting was the end for Tris's family relations; why couldn't she just meet her parents in the city one day? Where's the actual society in this mix?

And what were Dauntless meant to be guarding the city from? We never find out, but why would Erudite - if not all the other, more peaceable factions - be content to have aggressive soldier-types training in their midst unless there was a very good reason that the city needed defending? The concept of Divergence itself didn't work for me, either: on the one hand, it's presented as a neurological abnormality, something that makes people strong enough to resist the simulations, but on the other, it just means they can think outside the box. I found it impossible to believe that the rest of the population was so mentally simplistic and easily pigeonholed that the factional categories otherwise worked perfectly, and I disliked the implication that Tris and Tobias were special because they wanted to be more than one thing.

The timeframe of the book is short, too - everything happens in just a few weeks. That would be fine, except that, in this brief span, all the Dauntless initiates somehow go from being hopeless non-combatants to specialists in guns, knife-throwing and unarmed combat, sufficient that, in the first week and a half, they can beat the living crap out of each other for points. Sorry: do not buy it. Ditto the trains just magically running everywhere that only the Dauntless ride. Ditto the fact that technology is advanced enough for injection-simulations but not for proper surveillance technology or, let's face it, the internet. I mean, there are still NEWSPAPERS in this dystopian future, but no computer access for any of the main characters, which just feels... wrong. I don't buy that dauntless soldiers would train by playing capture the flag with paintball guns. I don't buy that Tris wonders once, early on, why there are seemingly no Dauntless adults, and then we're never provided with an explanation. I don't buy that physical contact is meant to be hugely taboo among the Abnegates, such that Tris has barely ever been touched by her parents, but that her mother hugs and touches her noticeably when they're reunited, with no sense that this is anomalous.

Also, and possibly this is just my cynicism coming through, but: I really, REALLY didn't buy that the city had no murders - that the faction system had somehow stopped them. I mean, so far as we saw, there weren't even any police or a proper judiciary system - Edward's eye-stabbing isn't investigated by ANYONE - so the idea that there were no murders otherwise? Nope. For the same reason of cynicism, I really didn't buy that Abnegation actually were good rulers, that the system which put them in charge was fair, or that Erudite were only after power. All the way through, I was waiting for Tris to realise that most of the stories spread by the Erudite about Abnegation's corruption were true - that, just as every other faction had a weakness, Abnegation's problem was their self-righteous assumption that only THEY could be entrusted with power, which had lead to them actively crave it under the guise of penitence. I was waiting, too, for Erudite to actually act like intelligent journalists rather than two-dimensional fearmongers - but it never happened, leaving us with the sense that Abnegation really were meant to be the Good Guys. Which, yeah. For a dystopian premise, didn't really work for me. But who knows? Maybe all that will happen in the subsequent volumes.

In other words: this book is awesome if you don't stop to question the premise. Which is a totally fine and understandable way to read! More power to you, if that's how you roll: just letting yourself be carried by the narrative is a visceral, powerful experience, and at the end of the day, the story really isn't about the world. I enjoyed the thrill of this book, the relationships and the tension and the speed, which is where the emphasis lay. But because I really do care about worldbuilding, I was constantly wondering how everything external to the action actually WORKED. Divergence is still a worthwhile read, but I'm hoping the next volumes might answer some of the questions I had. It would be nice to see the setting fleshed out beyond the level of a backdrop.