Divergent by Veronica Roth

The Divergent Trilogy Reviews
Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant
The Divergent Film Review

Published: May 3 2011

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Series: #1 of the Divergent Trilogy

Website: Author’s Blog

Introduction

Society is divided into five factions. Once you turn 16, you are forced to choose which faction you will join for life, or risk being factionless. Beatrice has always been part of her family’s Abnegation faction, living a quiet life of selflessness. When she turns 16, she surprises everyone, including herself, by choosing to leave her family permanently to join the wild Dauntless faction. There’s one problem: her faction test was inconclusive. She doesn’t belong to any single faction. She’s Divergent, a problem in their system, and if her secret comes out, she’ll be at the mercy of those who made the rules. Of course, she has to survive the Dauntless initiation process, where the mysterious instructor Four is trying to keep her safe by throwing her into danger.  

Beatrix’s Character

                The story is engrossing; it is easy to forget about other aspects of the novel, such as the characters. The protagonist, Tris, is one of those characters I have to defend. Yes, she has very little personality. She has desires (that surprise even her) and motivations, but what are her personality traits? There are actually surprisingly few character traits you can pin to her, though there are reasons why this makes sense.

                Abnegation is a faction that is selfless. They strive to be invisible by dressing in bland, grey clothes. Their children do not speak unless spoken to. They are taught to help whenever help is needed, to give what they have to others, and they are committed to community service. Their faction strikes away the idea of having an individual image. The adults have a private image, as they can do fun things like talk at home. The kids are meant to be perfect and quiet.

                Whether it was a well-planned move by the author or not, Beatrice, who grew up in Abnegation, lacks a definitive personality because she wasn’t allowed to explore her individual self.  Additionally, teens fluctuate in their personalities almost daily as they are still trying to define themselves. When it is her time to choose her faction, she has to do some soul searching. Children of Abnegation parents generally stay in Abnegation; their parents are in Abnegation, and they are raised to be obedient to them and not stand out in any way. Leaving Abnegation would cause a fuss and it would sadden their parents.

                What Beatrice does have is uncertainty, feelings of not-belonging, and a desire to break free and be an individual. The Dauntless are reckless in physically and psychologically. They also have the bravery aspect, and Beatrice wants to be brave enough to break free of her Abnegation ways.     

The Problem with Factions

One problem that I have is that the factions run on your personality and your job prospects. In my situation, I like community service and helping people, but I don’t want to be in the government. I am creative and peaceful, so I would also like Amity. Yet all Divergent shows them doing is picking fruit. While I am sure I would have fun picking fruit, it isn’t what I want to do with my life. I enjoy studying, learning, and teaching, so Euridite is probably the best for me because I could probably be a librarian with them (yay!), but there are aspects that I dislike about that faction. And what do Candor do? As far as I can tell, they are lie-detectors. Aside from prosecutors, what are the jobs they are supposed to be suited for?

The Society

                I want to know how their society came into being. The Hunger Games’ Panem is explained, and it is central to the plot. Since I have read Divergent, I have spoken to a teen who has read the whole trilogy, and she has informed me that the later books do explain it. However, I would have liked to hear about it in the first book. That is standard world building that has been missed. As I was reading, I wanted to know if the city has always been like this and if it is just this city or the whole world. I wondered what is beyond the city’s walls. Is it full of monsters, murderers, radiation in the soil? Something that drives the plot of the video game Resonance of Fate is the mystery of what is outside of the tower, Basel, that they live in. Finding out was an amazing experience, and I was confused when I read the last page of Divergent and closed the book. I want to know more about the world they live in! Yes, apparently I’ll get to read all about it in the next books, but there is a huge gap in world the building in the first book that aggravates me!

The Government

                What I do like about this dystopian is that the government is not immediately evil, like in 1984 or Brave New World. After all, when people set out to create new governments, they do not purposefully intend to create a dystopia; the people who set the rules believe they are doing the right thing. I can see why you would want to group like-minded people together for an efficient society. It is when the details of the society come to light that you realize that you don’t want to live there.

The Writing

                The writing works, though it is nothing special, and the lack of commas pesters me to no end. Since I started writing this review, I began reading Insurgent, the second book, and there are also moments when I noticed that Roth really should be using commas and she isn’t. I don’t have access to the first book at the moment, and if I catch any more while reading Insurgent, I’ll flag them so I can post them in my Insurgent review.  

Final Verdict

                I hate to jump on hypes, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I had a lot of questions regarding the history of the city, why Tris falls for Four (perhaps because no one else is interested in her?), and the grammar quality is sometimes lacking, and this brings my critique down. But should everyone and their moms read this? Yes! Regardless if you believe running a society this way would work or not, Divergent has a story that unfurls and keeps you reading.

The Movie

                I admit, I didn’t read the books until I saw the first trailer for the film during the previews at the theatre for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. I had access to the books, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading them. So, here are two trailers, in case you haven’t seen them, and I personally haven’t seen any on T.V.:

                The actress that plays Tris, Shailene Woodley, doesn’t reflect the image in my head. In the book, Tris is very small with a boyish figure. The actress is very pretty, but I didn’t envision Tris to look like that. I also pictured Four to look more tough, angrier, and gruff.

And WHY does IMDB state: “When she discovers a plot to destroy Divergents, Tris and the mysterious Four must find out what makes Divergents dangerous before it's too late”? It isn’t like this in the book. *Cries hysterically in a snow bank*   

With that said, I am still planning on seeing it with someone. If I were forced to go alone, I wouldn’t; I’d wait until it came out on DVD. I’m interested in how this will turn out, though. 

Edit: Movie Trailer Reaction

I, and some other people, are concerned that Four doesn't appear to be the Four that we know from the books. The best reaction to the movie trailer has been (and I'm paraphrasing), is Four saying: "Welcome to Dauntless. We're all about free love here."

Edit: Tattoos

In the book, Tris gets three crows tattooed along her collarbone. Has anyone noticed the popularity of bird tattoos on collarbones? I wonder if the popularity happened before the book, or after. It's unfortunate that they are overdone now, because I have a soft spot for bird tattoos.

Grammarly: The World's Best Grammar Checker

(I was compensated for a honest review)

Use Grammarly's online plagiarism checker because you don't want to be caught with someone else's words.

I have been following Grammarly on Facebook for a while, and their posts have brought me both laughs and enlightenment. Now, I am using their grammar checking service for my writing. To show everyone how it works, I've made some screenshots. The writing I used is some random word vomit that I typed in about three minutes that is about a character in She Came From the Sea. Here is what I used for an example:

Simone thrashed in the ocean with the violence of a Bedlamite. She was only up to her calves, and she screeched at the sunset through her clenched teeth. As she whipped around, slamming her fists into the water, creating a wave, a chunk of hair fell out of her head from the follicles.

Her beauty was already beginning to fade. Like the dying light, it was leaving her, slipping away to and place you cannot grasp. It was unbearable – she was the wilting wallflower before all this happened. Too quiet to attract attention, too modest to even try to be presentable. She was a shrinking violet until she grabbed her encounter and she never regretted it.

Eating the flesh and scales gave her the boost, the drive to live and thrive. She was able to pursue whatever she desired, and it was always for the good of the scholarly world. Sure, she went after men, but her passion was short-lived there.   

Soon, her vitality was going to drain away from her. Sanity was one thing to be overlooked if it hits you right, but to be a decaying skeleton? She wouldn’t die right away, she’d lose her energy first. She’d linger in her house and become bedridden. Then she’d decompose. Pieces of her would fall clean off the bone before she’d die. She would be begging for death and this is all because her supply has been depleted.

But what did she expect? One does not simply run into mermaids daily, or hunt them.

Open mouthed, she unleashed a primal scream at the sunset.   

 
It's far from perfect, but for three minutes of typing, I was good enough, and I didn't re-read what I had typed. Then, I ran it through Grammarly.

Copy and paste your text into the window and hover your mouse over the Start Review button. Select the type of writing. I choose Creative for this exercise.

Hit Start Review and let the processing commence.

And it found something! Oh, me and my pronoun usage.

Here's another correction for a sentence with a split infinitive. You are supplied with both Long explanations and Short explanations. I prefer the longer explanations, as I want to learn about what I'm doing wrong so I can avoid it in the future. 

In this screenshot, you can see where I have made a correction in blue font.

Clicking on an underlined word will give you synonyms.

Behind this active box, you can see that my score, at that point, was 100 of 100. I corrected all the issues that the tool identified for me. Now, I clicked the Plagiarism button that is right beside the Start Review button. I like this feature because I want don't want to unintentionally use phrases that have been used before.

After that, I am finished! My little bit of writing is much better because of this process. The mistakes that Grammarly identified were not caught by Microsoft Word 2010. This tool works as a second set of eyes. For me, it is highly valuable because I don't have a writing support group that I can hand off my writing to every week. Yes, one day I'll remember to use the right "wander" when people are strolling the halls, pronouns won't elude me, and I won't repeat the same word seven times on a page (it has happened). Grammarly is there to help me along and explain why something is incorrect. If you're like me, reading grammar books doesn't always cut it. I need to see the corrections in action from my own writing. 

Your high school English teacher was right - grammar is important in today's society, and it is one of the most difficult skills to master.

Tidal by Amanda Hocking

The Watersong Tetralogy Reviews

Wake and Lullaby

 

Published: St. Martin's Griffin

Publisher: April 16th 2013

Series: #3 Watersong
Website: Author’s Blog 

Introduction

Gemma can’t cope with being a siren, so she is desperate to find a way out. She discovers that she needs to find the scroll with the siren curse written on it to put an end to it. Unfortunately, if Gemma returns to normal, it means the death of the other sirens. Therefore, the other sirens will not willingly hand over the scroll. On the other hand, Penn wants to replace the whining Gemma, and Penn also has her sights set on Daniel, a man who is immune to the siren’s seductions. Daniel is dating Harper, Gemma’s sister, and there is only so long before Penn will get what she wants.

Story

This installment is more concerned with backstory and…talking. A lot of talking. There is some heart-crunching action at the end, and that is by far my favourite portion. Unfortunately, the characters are more concerned with talking, driving, whining, participating in a play, and doing some awful things to Gemma’s mother.  This series should be a trilogy, and all the useless talking in circles should have been cut from this book.

If you were interested in the backstory of the Sirens, then you’ll enjoy this book, or at least the parts that deliver a segment of their long lives. Although the reason why the tale of Bastian and the sirens was given to the reader was because Penn thinks about a descendent of Bastian may be in Capri. However, this is just dropped and forgotten.

The story is slow, yet there are some interesting concepts that are introduced, and I am sure they will be explored in the final book.

Gemma’s Siren Attributes

                The sirens have silky voices that are (generally) irresistible and they have an allure that gets them what they want. Perhaps Gemma hasn’t been a siren for long enough, but where is her charm? I find her dull. In this book she does seduce men, though the whole glamor isn’t there for her. Men just throw themselves at her, even when she is being the same dull wooden plank that she always is. The book would have been much more interesting if she exuded some sensual witchcraft, willingly or not.  

Harper

                In the other books, I liked Harper. She reminds me a bit of myself: I worry way too much about other people. However, in this book, it’s all Harper does. I get that she has a lot on her plate. At what point do you let you let a character do nothing but fret about other people? This is all she does. She worries about her boyfriend, the other sirens, her sister, her mom, the library, Marcy, and school. I know she has a nurturing complex, but I lost interest in her efforts because I wasn’t invested in her character anymore.

Cover

                I hope I’m not the only one who hates this cover. Showing a depiction of Daniel and Penn is bad enough, but look at Penn’s face! Now look at Daniel’s. He looks like a photo that has been imposed in some water and it looks fine. Now we all get to hear my theory about what happened to Penn’s face: Penn was like Daniel; a photograph. But to get the lighting correct from the lighthouse in the distance, they had to add some shadows onto her face, and the artist overdid it. Severely. Her eyes and eyebrows are unrealistic, and the shadow along her jawline kills me.

            The lighthouse in the distance also bothers me. Where is this lighthouse mentioned? I suppose it is just a standard nautical image, but it should have something to do with the story if it is on the cover.

The feathers in the splash behind Penn are a nice addition, though.

Final Verdict

                Because this is an installment in the Watersong series that is four books long, I have to say that if you enjoyed the first two, you should read this one. My hopes are that the fourth one will end with an amazing sense of satisfaction for the reader. This book, by itself, was a tad boring and simply too long for it to warrant its own installment. All this book did was eliminate characters and introduce new characters and concepts for the final book. I have high hopes for the finale of the Watersong trilogy, and if your library already has the first book, you kind of have to get this one too.