Just Finished Reading: Divergent by Veronica Roth (FP: 2011)

16 year old Beatrice Prior is about to make the most important decision of her life. As Choosing Day approaches she needs to decide on her Faction which will define the rest of her life and her place a future society still struggling with the aftermath of the great world spanning disaster that the Faction system is supposed to address. Troubled by indecision at least her (slightly) older brother will choose to stay in Abnegation – the selfless Faction. Shockingly he decides to break with expectations and joins Erudite dedicated to knowledge and truth. Torn even more by his unexpected act Beatrice makes her choice much to the shock of everyone she knows – Dauntless dedicated to courage and the conquering of all fear. But during the first set of tests Beatrice discovers something about herself that could threaten her very life – she is one of the small percentage of those who do not fit into any neat category. Known as Divergent these individuals are spoken of in hushed tones and seen as a real danger to the existence of everything they have worked for. Forced to hide what she is, and now known as Tris, she must do her very best to master a whole new set of skills, assert herself as never before and hide her true identity from everyone around her. Meanwhile the political landscape is shifting and revolution is in the air with Dauntless at the very heart of things. It’s a bad time to be Divergent.

After enjoying the movie (so much so I bought the DVD) I was looking forward to reading the book. I was not disappointed. Considering that the author was in her early 20’s when she produced this it’s actually quite impressive. Almost word for word and scene for scene from the movie – an impressive feat in itself – the books goes into move detail about the Faction system and actually explains things that the movie glossed over. The portrayal of Tris by Shailene Woodley in the film was, I thought, pretty spot on and inevitably whenever any of the characters appeared in the book I ‘saw’ them as their movie counterparts. I didn’t detect any great jarring between the two. Aspects of the work where different and I actually thought that some parts at least are better in the movie. I thought that the author lost the plot a bit near the end (say, about 80% of the way through) and the film handled it better. The only time I found myself slightly skimming and rolling my eyes and sighing a bit (and not in a good way) was the teen romance aspects which I thought where pretty naff – borderline terrible actually. Fortunately they didn’t happen all that often and, yet again, are handled better in the movie.

Overall though I found this to be surprisingly good (I actually surprised a few of the guys at work who probably though that this sort of thing was ‘above’ me) and, despite it basically being light SF it did manage to feed my need for a while (note to self – read more real SF soon!). Obviously I’m looking forward to the sequel, Insurgent, coming out soon and intend to read the book soon after. The third book Allegiant is coming out over two years so I might end up reading that first – but who knows what my reading habits will be by then. Recommended – especially if you liked the movie.
 
[2015 Reading Challenge: A Book that became a Movie – COMPLETE (6/50)]