Reviews Literature / Divergent

Boring at best and mean-spirited at worst

Let me first say that I enjoy dystopian novels for the most part, and I was initially excited to read this book based on glowing recommendations from everyone I knew, both on the Internet and in real life. Unfortunately, the first novel, which is the only one I tried to read, fell completely flat and had zero entertainment value. For one thing, the prose was awful. It's hard to explain but if you're familiar with the way some fanfic authors drag out sentences to pad their word count, that's the way I would describe the writing style.

The characters are probably the very worst part of the novel. I'm going to focus on the main character Tris, here, because I like to believe that if I don't mention the horrific excuse for a love interest he'll stop existing.

Tris (she doesn't go by "Bea" or "Beatrice" because she's too unique and special for that) is a socipathic cardboard cutout. She's supposed to be divergent, which is this series' version of being a half-blood or something, but all she does is follow the Dauntless clan's horrific rules blindly for some reason. She's an insane bitch who sees nothing wrong with 'training' involving beating her roommates within an inch of their lives. She pulls life-threatening stunts without batting an eyelash despite being raised in a very sheltered society, which leads me to believe that she's just nuts and doesn't understand why someone would feel fear. This is evidenced by the fact that she and her boyfriend like to sit around and bash people who don't want to jump out of moving trains for shits and giggles.

I know that it's probably my fault that I don't understand this book for not finishing the thing, but really, if this is the impression I get from reading half of your book, then is it really worth reading the other half?