Review Detail

Throughout the book I was uncertain what to think, the kind of dystopia it was confused me greatly for most of the story. Was it the kind that I found in Matched or Giver, where everything was so controlled and any kind of imperfection was either eradicated or unknown by the general populace. Or was it that kind found in 1984 where the government purposefully made an underdog group to keep those who were in the upper groups in line. Eventually I figured it was actually neither, in fact the resemblance was more closely tied to our own world than that of most dystopian's I have read. However, this close resemblance is not a chilling cry to change our ways as 1984. Instead it seemed more like it was grabbed from our time and changed around a bit and plopped into the story to create the political intrigue and corruption in government of today, with a slightly dystopian twist.

If any of that made sense to anyone, I congratulate you. I barely made sense to me and I am still slightly confused as to what I think about it. I think it worked, I enjoyed the book a lot, but it confused me a lot too. As is evident. I guess in the end I just stopped trying to understand the world and just enjoyed the story.

Despite my confusion, I did really enjoy this book a lot. The only thing that kept it from getting a five star was my confusion, and a few other minor things.

Tris was an excellent protagonist; she was flawed and imperfect and every action she took made sense in relation to her character. The author didn't just change the character to fit what she, or the readers might have wanted. I know there were quite a few times that I got really annoyed and mad at Tris, but I loved every minute of it because really, is there anyone you know who you spend a lot of time with that doesn't annoy you at least a little bit from time to time? In that way Tris reminded me of Katniss, which is perhaps why so many who liked Hunger Games liked Divergent, because despite the huge enormous differences between Katniss and Tris they are in a roundabout way written the same.

As for Four(haha for four!) at first I had some trouble getting over the fact that he was her instructor, that seemed kind of underhanded and gross. Also I couldn't get over how mean he was to her, it seemed unlikely that anything would happen. But then I remembered he was not too much older than her, and that he would only instruct her for a couple weeks and then they would be members together. And when he started being sweet to her and going out of his way to explain things to her I began to see that their romance could work and be really sweet and adorable. Which is basically what happens and I adore it! Four....errr Tobias, is awesome. Just so everyone knows. :)

About halfway through the book I stopped liking/caring about Christina, Will, and Al. I found them annoying and not real friends, it was totally realistic and I'm sure that was the author's intention, but I stopped liking them. I loved Uriah and co. the whole way through however, they were epically awesome!

As for Peter and his friends, throughout most of the book I kept thinking how unlikely it was that someone could be so consistently mean with no redeeming qualities. Then I remembered a girl in my sister's class throughout most of her school years. In all the time I knew her she was that consistently mean, and as far as I know she has no qualities that I would consider good. In fact, she reminded me a lot of Peter in how she treated my sister, once I remembered her, I realized that Peter wasn't that far-fetched of a character. Still I think it would have been intriguing to see if he does change his ways or have some good qualities hidden deep inside of him, perhaps that will be explored in the next book?

Plot talk. Despite all the action and awesomeness, it was slow. How does that work?!?!?!? Well, the actual over-arcing plot doesn't get started until the last 100 or so pages. There are hints given throughout the book and slight advancements but overall it happens in the last portion of the book. Did I mind? Not that much, the rest of the book was compelling and interesting and important, but I was confused(again) about the plot. I had no clue what it was and I was almost done, I kept wondering if I was missing something important, or if the plot of the book was just her initiation into Dauntless. Eventually I realized that the plot was happening just in very tiny increments and was probably going to jumpstart after her initiation(hint: I was right). Like I said though, I didn't mind how the plot went, it just confused me. I don't like being confused. :P

I loved the idea behind the factions though! I thought it was incredibly unique and was really interesting to read and learn about. I found that at the end it would have been incredibly interesting to read about a bunch of different characters going through different initiations into the different factions. Except for maybe Abnegation, which sounds incredibly boring. But other than that it would be so interesting! It also made complete sense in the end that they would become corrupt, because obviously humans are flawed and can't maintain the perfect ideal of a character trait forever. I think the way things are going down is intriguing and I can't wait to see what happens in the coming books.