Necroing this, as the sequel, Insurgent, was released today. I've just finished reading it, so if anyone wants to hear anything about it, feel free to ask. I don't want to made this thread chock-full of spoilers if nobody wants them, hence why I've not written up anything yet.
"In the end a gentle heart may be worth more than pride or valor."Right, marking spoilers for Insurgent. I'm assuming people have read the first book, here, so I may refer to things from the first book without spoiler tags. Unless it's like monumental.
A pleasant surprise for me was Jeanine's portrayal as more of an anti-villain, even if she is still a horribly cold and calculating woman, than in Divergent. Her motivations for crippling Abnegation become more clear, and I kind of love to hate her now. Shame she gets killed off.
Something I really appreciated, too, was Johanna(the representative of Amity)'s portrayal. Especially at the end, when she basically quits Amity and shows her with more abnegation traits (joining in the climactic battle to defend the innocent civilians). It'll be interesting to see what implications this may have for what used to be Amity in the future.
One thing that bugged me was that it seems like everyone's a faction transfer, or if they're not, then they're divergent. Tris' dad = former erudite, Tobias's dad = divergent etc. Another that bugged me was that when Tris and Tobias are kept in Erudite HQ, the security was kind of lax.
I was so looking forward to seeing Candor, and then was gutted when basically they get mind-controlled and absorbed into Erudite's forces. I mean, it was clear that they would be opposing the Erudites from the events of the first book, because they would want to know why Erudite mind-controlled Dauntless into slaughtering Abnegation, which I doubt Erudite would want to share. Would have just been interesting to see some Candor characters joining the mix.
Caleb is revealed to be either a double or triple agent, which I wasn't expecting at all, so it'll be interesting to see more of him in the third book.
I must say, my absolute favourite character in this series is Christina. The way she deals with learning the truth about Will's death is great, and she's just so fabulous.
I knew that the factionless would end up becoming involved read as: rebelling against the factions, but I didn't anticipate Four's mother faking her own death and becoming one of the factionless' main leaders as a Magnificent Bastard. I wonder what exactly is going to happen now that the faction system has been dissolved. And what exactly the knowledge about outside of Chicago will do to those within the fence, who are expected to have rediscovered their human conscience. And how exactly those from outside the fence will react when the former factions and factionless show up.
So, it sucks we have to wait another year to find all that out. :/
edited 2nd May '12 7:09:18 AM by Pattyunknown
"In the end a gentle heart may be worth more than pride or valor."Just finished it today. I'll probably write a review of it sometime this week or next week.
In any case, I find it interesting how Tobias keeps calling Tris out for being a Death Seeker. It's interesting seeing her acting this way, considering what she has to endured.
One problem for me was the amount of characters, and me forgetting the details of them, but I sort of just rolled with it.
Fernando was an interesting character. I thought of him as an Aspie. Too bad he had to be killed off after only having about three scenes.
Also, concerning Amity, I thought they would have a larger role, considering their symbol is on the cover, but the entire peace serum incident was amusing.
I was confused with one of the love scenes at the beginning. Was Tris wearing underwear or not when she snuck into Tobia's bedroom in Amity?
I'll probably think up more thoughts later.
How would you compare Katniss and Tris, considering they both have sociopathic yet heroic traits?
Tris annoys me more than Katniss does. I don't know why, but Tris and Tobias just seem a little too forced as characters, if that's the right phrase for what I'm thinking of (I'm very sleep-deprived, so forgive me for incorrect phrasing lol). I should be able to write up a more meaningful comparison tomorrow.
"In the end a gentle heart may be worth more than pride or valor."I dunno
I kinda like Tris and in Insurgent she really does experience a lot of remorse for her actions. Let's face it she lives in a world or faction where you have to be tough. So I wouldn't say she's sociopathic. Also on the divergent page there's one comment saying that she wasn't traumatized in book 1 when the Dauntless initiates tried to kill her. I would disagree. She probably was affected by it, but being in Dauntless in a very Dog-eat-dog type of atmosphere she couldn't show it.
So she reacts with extreme venom towards the one participant who approaches her, someone she thought was her friend.

Let's talk about the YA book Divergent! :D
So. You get Divergent by deconstructing Harry Potter's concept of houses, take a few pages out of The Hunger Games' book, sprinkle in some of The Giver, and put them together in an intriguing thriller with an interesting world. I say it's the best book I read this year, and probably going to be the next big thing.
Discuss. What did you like about it? Anything that bugs you? I wish I saw more of Amity, but I think that was on purpose. Anything that stood out? I was nervous when Beatrice had to choose her faction.
edited 20th Jun '11 1:44:25 PM by chihuahua0