I wonder what percentage of Young Adult [YA] fiction currently published features a dystopian world. Are our teens so disenchanted with their own real world that they only want to read fantasy? Certainly Suzanne Collins and Stephanie Meyer have a lot of responsibility for this, their two series have dominated the bookshelves and cinema screens for the last six years. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the feistiness of Katniss, though I was not so keen on Bella who was a bit too sulky for me.

So to Divergent, a book that had passed me by until I read online reviews, reviews which prompted my Kindle purchase of the trilogy. The story is set in a city which was once Chicago where every citizen belongs to one of five factions. Each faction represents a human virtue: Candor [honesty], Amity [kindness], Dauntless [fearlessness], Abnegation [selflessness], Erudite [searching for knowledge]. At 16, teenagers are assessed for their affinity to the factions and can choose the faction they will be for the rest of their life. Anyone whose test results are inconclusive is labelled ‘divergent’. Tris, the protagonist, is divergent. This is her story and is the first of a trilogy. The film of Divergent is due out in the UK in April 2014 starring Kate Winslet as the leader of the Erudite faction. The film of book two, Insurgent, will follow in 2015.

The key thing I did like about Divergent:-

… Tris embraces her non-conformity. She is brave enough to be true to herself even though at times she is not sure what that is. She learns to be suspicious of labels, not to pre-judge people.

But there were quite a few things I didn’t like about Divergent:-

… the factions are cliches;

… the fearlessness of the Dauntless verges on stupidity, danger for the sake of it. It is that particular computer-game type of violence that doesn’t hurt on the page but would seriously damage/kill you if you tried it in real life;

… the characters are under-developed, none of the depth here of The Hunger Games.

… the story is predictable, I’d worked out the ending before I got there.

That said, I bought the trilogy so will read books two and three. Don’t mis-understand me, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy these books but just that they seem superficial in comparison with The Hunger Games, every page of which gives you the sense of the deep back story.
‘Divergent’ by Veronica Roth