I held off on reading the Divergent series. 50 Shades upset me enough with the
similarities to Twilight that I didn’t want to read another copycat book.
I was so pleasantly surprised.
Yes. This is the
ever-after story of the end of the world.
Yes. There is a strong, female
youth set to save them. But really, that
is where the story lines…diverge.
Beatrice is a young lady that is possibly a little small for
her age, a little naïve, and unsure of her place in the world. Her world is recuperating from an end-of-the-world
apocalypse and the new government has decided that in order to keep the peace,
there will be different factions responsible for different parts of the new
world. Beatrice is a part of the
Abnegation faction which is a group of selfless people and the leaders of the
new world.
At the age of 16, Beatrice goes through an aptitude test
that will determine what faction best suits her. Most youth are suited for the life they grew
up with, however, some are not, in which case they transfer to another faction
and are lost to their families forever: Faction before blood. If someone’s test comes back inconclusive,
meaning they are appropriate for more than one faction, they are labeled
Divergent which is dangerous because they don’t conform. They are looked at as rebels, so in Beatrice’s
case, her tester tells her to tell no one of her result and that she will have
to choose her own faction at the upcoming Choosing Ceremony.
After the Choosing Ceremony, belonging to the Dauntless
faction, she takes the new name of Tris and embarks on a life of risk-taking
and learns fighting skills as the Dauntless are the protectors of the new
world. Tris makes new friends, enemies,
and even falls in love. As the book
closes, the real threat is recognized in the form of the Erudites who take
their intelligence to a level of manipulation, injecting Dauntless with a serum
that gives the Erudites control of the Dauntless minds. Of course Tris saves the day and her
boyfriend, but loses her parents who selflessly put themselves in harm’s way to
save her.
I enjoyed this book.
There were parts that moved a little slowly, but the friction between
the different factions was believable and the story line was easy to
follow. It was suspenseful but not
scary. The tasks that were put before
the initiates made it clear that something big was going to come up. I was surprised that it was as easy as it was
to keep her Divergent status a secret though.
Overall, I give the book five stars and can only hope that
Insurgent, book two in the series, is as good as the first.
