Divergent (Divergent, #1)

Author: Veronica Roth

Rating: ⭐ 2/5

Date Read: 2013/10/27

Pages: 487

Ah, young adult. I am not someone who routinely reads books written for children, although I won’t rule them out either. I guess that makes me Y-curious. Sometimes, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of young adult novels (The Fault in Our Stars still has me tearing up), but mostly reading YA reminds me why I usually swing the other way. Enter Divergent. It sounded interesting, it’s rated highly, I figured why not? Answer: because it’s an awful, awful book. It’s the worst thing I’ve read since Twilight. But I soldiered on, because Divergent is bad in a so bad it’s good kind of way. It was worth it, because I got to laugh out loud at quotes like this “Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.” Or this “I am selfish. I am brave.”

Tris is born into a dystopian version of Chicago in which the city’s citizens are divided into factions that are so functionally useless that even a subpar political science student who happened to to high on acid would be like “Dude, that would never work.” Scratch that: even the house Republicans would think that this is a terrible idea, and their idea of good government is shutting it down and giving everyone a gun.

Right, so in this world you can only be one type of person: smart, brave, selfless, friendly, or honest. In other words, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and three different types of Hufflepuff. Apparently, these qualities are mutually exclusive, so you can only pick one. Being a multifaceted person (aka Divergent) is deemed incredibly dangerous, probably because writing psychologically real characters is, like, totally hard.

Anyway, the plot of Divergent revolves around all the 16 year olds deciding what type of person they’re going to be (because it makes sense to let children whose frontal lobes aren’t even fully developed make important decisions that will impact them for the rest of their lives). Then there’s a bizarre initiation ceremony that mostly seems to involve kids beating each other up and paintball. Throughout the ephebic shenanigans, we find out that Tris is good at things, even though she’s skinny and female. Shocking, no?

What’s going on in the world? How did Lake Michigan turn into a marsh? Who has survived whatever apocalypse happened outside of Chicago? Who knows. Instead, we focus on the important things, like tattoos and stuff. The world building is secondary, and filled with all sorts of inconsistencies. For instance, they have the technology to induce crazy hallucinations and output brain activity to a monitor in real time, and without any sort of measuring device (if you know anything about how the brain works, feel free to laugh out loud at the implausibility), but they’re somehow unable to bring the CTA trains to a full stop at the stations. Say what?

Side note: as a Chicagoan, I must say that it’s unlikely that the CTA buses would still be running after some sort of cataclysmic, world-changing event. I mean, they don’t even come as often as they’re supposed to after 10pm. Sometimes they do that thing where no buses come for 20 minutes, then two come in a row, which never makes any sense to me. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve waited much longer than necessary for a bus from the Target on Peterson back to the red line, I’d definitely have enough money to take a cab instead. More unlikely is the idea that the city of Chicago would ever be run by a faction of incorruptible, selfless people. Cute.

Back to the review: this book definitely deserves only one star, based on sheer implausibility. But I am fickle, and I like to be entertained, even at the expense of a book that takes itself far too seriously. For that it gets an additional star. Now, if you excuse me, I have to get back to my gothic horror novel filled with mysterious women bathed in moonlight, because that book makes a lot more sense.