Last weekend, I finally finished reading the Divergent series. My sister had been trying to convince me to start the books for at least two years. I thought it was just going to be some drab variation of “The Hunger Games” (which I loved), but I craved a new reading experience and didn’t feel like reading something so similar.
I somewhat begrudgingly saw the movie with her over winter break, and I really really liked it. As soon as the credits rolled onto the screen, I made my decision to read the books. (My sister is a big fan of audio-books and that’s what she gave me. So technically I didn’t “read” them, a lovely voice from my headphones read them to me. But I digress.)
The series follows the life of Beatrice Prior, a girl living in a fenced-in society divided into factions: Dauntless (the brave), Abnegation (the selfless), Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest) and Erudite (the intelligent.) Upon turning 16, Beatrice takes a test that will tell her what faction matches her personality, which will help her pick one. However, Beatrice’s test results are inconclusive— She doesn’t fit into just one single faction. She is Divergent.
On choosing day, she boldly decides to join the daredevils in Dauntless, a choice that threatens her safety but reveals her courage. Through the challenging initiation process she makes the transformation from a quiet, almost invisible Beatrice to the brave, outspoken Tris. As lethal complications arise and secrets are exposed, the novels detail Tris’s journey of survival and her mission for justice and truth.
Like many trilogies, the first of the series, Divergent, only scratches the surface of all the underlying issues that are soon addressed in the second book, Insurgent, and eventually lead to the main action and resolution in the third book, Allegiant.
The Divergent series is comparable in any other Young Adult dystopian series. It’s a kind of cross between The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner. Even though it shares similar aspects with those series, however, it still stands out. For one thing, there is no cliche love triangle! In fact, there is little love interest at all until the very end of the first book, which is quite refreshing and fairly unprecedented for YA novels.
On top of that, the amount of death that occurs in the books, although abundant, does seem to be more accurate (maybe too accurate) than various other dystopian books. The author, Veronica Roth, is truly not afraid to kill off her characters (some very, very prominent characters, but no spoilers!) in an almost George R.R. Martin fashion (Game of Thrones…hello.)
Despite Roth’s audacity to slaughter various characters the readers have become extremely emotionally attached to, whose deaths can sometime seem pointless and add no depth to the plot (there is one character death in particular I have still not fully recovered from), if you dig dystopian fiction’s common theme of government overthrow in the name of peace and justice, then this series should definitely make it on your summer reading list.