Divergent

Divergent

Genre: Fiction

Suggested age: 12 -18

Author: Veronica Roth

ISBN: 9780062024039

Publisher:  Katherine Tegen Books

Imagine if you had to make a decision at 16 years old; a decision that would determine, your beliefs, your friends, and your allegiance.  In a world where faction is thicker than blood, you choose your faction once, no turning back.  

In a dystopian Chicago, Beatrice Prior is faced with such a choice.  Chicago has been divided into five factions, each dedicated to a virtue:   Abnegation (selflessness), Amity (peaceful), Dauntless (bravery), Candor (honesty), Erudite(knowledge).  Upon inconclusive results from Beatrice’s aptitude test, Beatrice makes a bold decision shocking everyone, including herself, and sets forth to discover if she can truly live (and perhaps die) solely under one faction’s rule.  Reinventing herself as Tris, she must turn her back on her family and endure a dangerous and daunting initiation, all while hiding a deadly secret about herself.  Failing in either endeavor means death or worse, being rendered factionless. 

 

Roth’s dystopian future is reminiscent of both DuPrau’s City of Ember and Collins’ The Hunger Games, which in itself warrants a vague suspicion of the reality holding this society together; who’s holding the puppet strings?  The action that surrounds the train tracks reminds me of Westerfeld’s Uglies series and gives me hope that those tracks go somewhere free of the madness of the faction system, what’s behind those gates that Dauntless soldiers tirelessly patrol?  Although this is only book one of the series, I would have liked to have been given a few more tasty hints at what incited the faction system (besides “war”) and possibly have been introduced to older members of this society that may or may not harbor the no doubt, bloody history of the faction system.  All in all, I’m on the wait-list for the ebook version of Insurgent, Book Two and am eagerly waiting to read more about Roth’s futuristic world.  

For a preview of Divergent visit HERE. 
Or, view my book trailer!