Divergent by Veronica Roth

World-Building: Decent
Characterization: Decent
Plot: Page-turner

This book was definitely a page-turner. Something about it was compelling me to keep reading even though at times, I wasn't really sure what my motivation to keep reading was. It's been compared to The Hunger Games, and I was told by someone that it was better than the Hunger Games. I decided to give it a try, but I had almost zero expectations after the fiasco that Hunger Games was. So I was pleasantly surprised by this book.

The world-building and plot are a little clunky. There are some issues with the characterization - Tris sometimes does things that don't fully add up and there's not enough acknowledgement of the family that she left behind. However, overall, the book is good. I found it particularly refreshing in comparison to Hunger Games, because unlike that terrible series this book does actually have an ethical underpinning. It's a book about bullying, it's a book about identity and choices. This is what I loved most about it.

The book follows Tris, a girl who is going through the stages of an initiation process. Everyone in the city is forced to choose between one of five factions that are each based on a virtue, but Tris finds that she can't be put into one box. She has qualities of more than one faction. She makes a surprising choice and she is forced to go through a lot during the initiation process and this was honestly a  very fun read. However, near the end things suddenly started to happen too fast. Things that were not properly foreshadowed or built up to. The action was great, and the beginning of the book was great, but there was a slight disconnect.

Other than that plotting issue I was also annoyed by Tris's complete lack of common sense when she went into the final test of the initiation. She knew that being divergent could get her killed. She know that if she behaved a certain way in the simulation it would be obvious she was divergent, and yet she had no plan going into the test and proceeded to give herself away. If she had made a plan and then been unable to go through with it because of her fear that would have been ok, but there was no plan.

I would recommend this book as a fun read. The world building, characterization and plot were all great and the ethical underpinning of the book was great. Could it have been better? Sure, but it was still way better than some of the stuff out there today!