Rating: 4/5
I was so surprised on how much I enjoyed this book. I honestly thought I’d hate it because I’m not having much luck with dystopian books! I read The Hunger Games, which I couldn’t get into and found it hard to visual the scenes. Then I read Delirium, which I just absolutely hated, I thought the writing was beautifully poetic but the concept was stupid. And then I read this not having the highest expectations for it and ended up liking it a lot! It’s been compared to the Hunger Games because of its target audience and there is a similarity of what happened to Peeta in Mockingjay in this book, but I think it was accidental and Divergent is different. The first dystopian book I actually like.
Spoilers up ahead.
“I am selfish. I am brave.”
This book is set in Chicago (Why Chicago? Its where the author lives), where the society is separated into five different factions. There’s Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peace), Erudite (the intelligent) and Abnegation (the selfless). On every year, each sixteen year old must go through a test to see which faction they belong to and must devote to for the rest of their lives. The protagonist is Beatrice Prior who must make a choice on whether to stay with her family in Abnegation or to leave and join a new faction. It’s “faction before blood” and that’s all her loyalty lies.
When Beatrice takes the test and her results are surprising. She doesn’t fit to one faction but three – Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite. This makes her a ‘Divergent’ and Tori warns her that she must not tell anyone this information because anyone who is Divergent is killed by faction leaders, and it is said to be dangerous. So in the end Beatrice chooses Dauntless. That’s the easy part and now the hard part...
Beatrice renames herself as Tris and what she doesn’t realise about choosing Dauntless is that you are tested on your strength, skill and bravery. It involves knife throwing, fighting for fun, throwing yourself off buildings and going through a series of tests in a simulation to face your fears, which is scary. You have to pass each stage and there is a ranking board of who has made it in the top 10 and if your not listed then your factionless (which kind of means you’re an outcast). Dauntless is absolutely insane! First off they’re on a train and then they have to jump off and onto a roof! One girl just dies from jumping! And then on a roof and onto a net, then we meet Four, the instructor of the faction. Tris was the first jumper and then it was Christina, to which the two form a friendship, along with Will.
"Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up. I’ve seen it. It’s fascinating." He releases me but doesn’t pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. “Sometimes I just want to see it again. Want to see you awake.”
I am a sucker for love stories, so it was no surprise that I really enjoyed reading about Tris and Four. You could just tell from reading that Four really liked Tris and it took her a good while that he liked her. When Four first enters, the first impression I got was that he was a very intimidating character. I thought the romance was very well written; it showed how much Four really cared about Tris and how he observed her while the training. He has a vulnerable side to him when he shows Tris his fear landscape. The reason why he is nicknamed Four is because he only has four fears. I really liked how straightforward he was with his feelings for her, there was no beating around the bush. In this once scene, where Tris says she’s not pretty, to which Four just says:
“Fine. You’re not pretty. So?” He kisses my cheek. “I like how you look.”
The development between Tris and Four flowed really well, it wasn’t rushed and thing is that it didn’t feel like a cliché.
Towards the near ending of the book, we find out that a war is happening. Erudite are planning to use Dauntless to launch an attack on the Abnegation faction by injecting Dauntless with serum, which makes them sleeper soldiers. It was so terribly heartbreaking that Tris’ mum and dad died saving her.
I give this book a well-deserved four stars out of five. I still can’t believe the author was just 22 when she published this book! She’s so young and very talented. This is such a well-written book; I could visual the scenes and a good use of imaginative words. Good plot, great characters and the pacing was good. I honestly couldn’t put it down! I found myself being intrigued and wanting to read the next chapter. One thing is that I wished the author could have involved the secondary characters a little more. I liked Christina and Will, but I can’t believe Tris shot Will! I think tension will rise between her and Christina in the next book.
Tris should have just killed Peter, rather than allow him to come with her onto the train to Amity at the end of the book. He was a really nasty and vindictive person, ugh hated him, along with Eric! What Peter did to Edward was just so vicious. I felt so so sorry for Edward; words cannot describe the pain he went through because of what Peter did to him. It was pure jealousy.
I like how Tris is a strong female protagonist. She was weak to begin with because she didn’t know where she belonged or what she was meant to do, stay with her parents or leave. She never felt like she belonged to Abengation because selflessness never came natural to her, like it did to her brother, Caleb. But throughout the book she grew and became a really brave, fierce and tough person. I admired how well she got through the fights and her fear landscapes. She was so kickass. She belonged to Dauntless and it made her selfless.
This is definitely a worthy read, I recommend (and I hardly say this).
I was so surprised on how much I enjoyed this book. I honestly thought I’d hate it because I’m not having much luck with dystopian books! I read The Hunger Games, which I couldn’t get into and found it hard to visual the scenes. Then I read Delirium, which I just absolutely hated, I thought the writing was beautifully poetic but the concept was stupid. And then I read this not having the highest expectations for it and ended up liking it a lot! It’s been compared to the Hunger Games because of its target audience and there is a similarity of what happened to Peeta in Mockingjay in this book, but I think it was accidental and Divergent is different. The first dystopian book I actually like.
Spoilers up ahead.
“I am selfish. I am brave.”
This book is set in Chicago (Why Chicago? Its where the author lives), where the society is separated into five different factions. There’s Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peace), Erudite (the intelligent) and Abnegation (the selfless). On every year, each sixteen year old must go through a test to see which faction they belong to and must devote to for the rest of their lives. The protagonist is Beatrice Prior who must make a choice on whether to stay with her family in Abnegation or to leave and join a new faction. It’s “faction before blood” and that’s all her loyalty lies.
When Beatrice takes the test and her results are surprising. She doesn’t fit to one faction but three – Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite. This makes her a ‘Divergent’ and Tori warns her that she must not tell anyone this information because anyone who is Divergent is killed by faction leaders, and it is said to be dangerous. So in the end Beatrice chooses Dauntless. That’s the easy part and now the hard part...
Beatrice renames herself as Tris and what she doesn’t realise about choosing Dauntless is that you are tested on your strength, skill and bravery. It involves knife throwing, fighting for fun, throwing yourself off buildings and going through a series of tests in a simulation to face your fears, which is scary. You have to pass each stage and there is a ranking board of who has made it in the top 10 and if your not listed then your factionless (which kind of means you’re an outcast). Dauntless is absolutely insane! First off they’re on a train and then they have to jump off and onto a roof! One girl just dies from jumping! And then on a roof and onto a net, then we meet Four, the instructor of the faction. Tris was the first jumper and then it was Christina, to which the two form a friendship, along with Will.
"Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up. I’ve seen it. It’s fascinating." He releases me but doesn’t pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. “Sometimes I just want to see it again. Want to see you awake.”
I am a sucker for love stories, so it was no surprise that I really enjoyed reading about Tris and Four. You could just tell from reading that Four really liked Tris and it took her a good while that he liked her. When Four first enters, the first impression I got was that he was a very intimidating character. I thought the romance was very well written; it showed how much Four really cared about Tris and how he observed her while the training. He has a vulnerable side to him when he shows Tris his fear landscape. The reason why he is nicknamed Four is because he only has four fears. I really liked how straightforward he was with his feelings for her, there was no beating around the bush. In this once scene, where Tris says she’s not pretty, to which Four just says:
“Fine. You’re not pretty. So?” He kisses my cheek. “I like how you look.”
The development between Tris and Four flowed really well, it wasn’t rushed and thing is that it didn’t feel like a cliché.
Towards the near ending of the book, we find out that a war is happening. Erudite are planning to use Dauntless to launch an attack on the Abnegation faction by injecting Dauntless with serum, which makes them sleeper soldiers. It was so terribly heartbreaking that Tris’ mum and dad died saving her.
I give this book a well-deserved four stars out of five. I still can’t believe the author was just 22 when she published this book! She’s so young and very talented. This is such a well-written book; I could visual the scenes and a good use of imaginative words. Good plot, great characters and the pacing was good. I honestly couldn’t put it down! I found myself being intrigued and wanting to read the next chapter. One thing is that I wished the author could have involved the secondary characters a little more. I liked Christina and Will, but I can’t believe Tris shot Will! I think tension will rise between her and Christina in the next book.
Tris should have just killed Peter, rather than allow him to come with her onto the train to Amity at the end of the book. He was a really nasty and vindictive person, ugh hated him, along with Eric! What Peter did to Edward was just so vicious. I felt so so sorry for Edward; words cannot describe the pain he went through because of what Peter did to him. It was pure jealousy.
I like how Tris is a strong female protagonist. She was weak to begin with because she didn’t know where she belonged or what she was meant to do, stay with her parents or leave. She never felt like she belonged to Abengation because selflessness never came natural to her, like it did to her brother, Caleb. But throughout the book she grew and became a really brave, fierce and tough person. I admired how well she got through the fights and her fear landscapes. She was so kickass. She belonged to Dauntless and it made her selfless.
This is definitely a worthy read, I recommend (and I hardly say this).
In the book Tris is described as blonde. For some odd reason, I was imagining her in my mind as a brunette! I haven’t seen Shailene’s acting before, actually I’ve never heard of her but I’ve seen the pictures of her as Tris in fighting gear and I think she’ll be good. Apparently the first choice for Four was Jeremy Irvine, who was in Great Expectations and Now is Good, but he turned it down because he had a fear of being typcasted as a teen idol, which is fair enough and wise because look what happened to Robert Pattinson. Theo James is a really good choice for Four because he is how I actually imagined Four! He looks the part, even though he is so much older than eighteen. Kate Winslet would be great as Jeanine!
Let me know what you think about Divergent in the comments.
Love Han x
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