Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Summary
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

Review
In some minds the fantasized idea that our world is crumbling and could be constructed in a more equal fashion seems the easy way out. Our society is struggling with an environment and occupants of our world seeming to be working against each other in order to survive. The first book of the Divergent series,Divergent, gives one impression of what human society could be like when everyone has the same social status and are forced to make all of the same painstaking decisions.
 
Beatrice Prior’s sixteenth birthday has arrived and she does not know whether to feel nervous, anxious or purely excited. In Beatrice’s dystopian world, there is an honorary tradition of choosing one of the five factions based on their given virtue to spend the rest of your life once you reach the age of sixteen. The five factions are: the selfless Abnegation, the honest Candor, the brave Dauntless, the peaceful Amity and the intelligent Erudite. For such a uniform society, Beatrice’s has to decide if the best place for herself is at home with her parents or in a different faction that is home to a whole new way of life for any potential outsider. Once Beatrice makes her decision, she realizes that her choice will not only change her life forever, but also shock herself more than anyone else.
 
Once faced with the aggressive transition period after her birthday, Beatrice decides that she wants to redevelop herself in the process by renaming herself Tris, while competing alongside her the other initiates. As if there isn’t enough stress and chaos happening around her, Tris meets a mysteriously remarkable boy, but she cannot decide if he is someone she wants to trust since she is carrying a very dark secret, one that could get her killed at any moment.
 
As Tris struggles with new friends, physical obstacles and more questions than ever about the past, the reader is continually faced with the internal conflict of wondering if a morally balanced society such as this could ever exist. Veronica Roth’s leading novel of the Divergent series gives us a sense that sometimes it is understandable to think in a different direction than everyone else as long as the reasons are an equal balance of selfish and selfless goals.
 
This novel allows the reader to attempt to understand the unique ways of life in Tris’s world, while testing the boundaries of such a futuristic experiment at a utopian society. Such a ‘perfect’ lifestyle brings new hope and wonder to any person forced to deal with problems and unfairness in everyday life. The true quandary is not what form of society is meant to truly work best, but rather which form will allow characters like Tris to find true happiness in its purest form and the readers who live vicariously through her.

Reviewed by Nicole Williams

Book Information
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 5/3/2011
Pages: 576

Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Summary
 One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

Review
Some of the most difficult decisions in life are ones that we never seem to forget. The concept of life and death is chalked up to a dramatic line in a story, but never associated with circumstances in a real life situation. When someone is handed a gun, we automatically assume protection for ourselves, survival. The other side of the coin is that we do not feel protected when faced with someone who is threatening our lives, especially if it is someone we love.

Tris Prior has lost almost everyone and everything she has ever known. Almost. She has lost her parents, most of her friends, and both her old and new factions. When faced with a sense of hopelessness in life, the only person she can turn to is Tobias. Tobias is hers. There is no other way to describe it; they would do anything to protect one another from the crumbling society around them. What Tobias does not know is that deep down Tris is hiding a bigger secret than anyone around her could understand, including Tobias. The ghosts of her parents and her friend Will are haunting her, and she cannot imagine there is any reason to live after all the bloodshed.

As Tobias and Tris work with their fellow Dauntless members to stand up against Jeanine Matthews and her loyal Erudites, the reader feels like a traitor within the war itself, following the suicidal mind of Tris while also wanting to fight for the collapse of the Erudite headquarters. The constant personal battle Tris is working to keep hidden from all of her friends fails to keep the ones she cares about out of harm’s way, but keeps the reader on the edge of their seat as time and time again Tris risks her life in selfish ways that never seem to hurt anyone but herself.

This second novel continuing the Divergent series focuses mainly on the inner relationships between the main characters, while giving the reader a chance to decide for themselves if they agree with Tris, Tobias, and their fellow friends’ decisions. Tris believes that by sacrificing herself she is selflessly keeping the ones that she cares about safe, but the reality is that the comfortable society with four polished factions and a stable and sensible government no longer exist. As I read this book I felt as though I was spiraling farther and farther into the depths of Tris’s grief, which in turn gave the story a stronger feeling of suspense because I never knew what stunt Tris might pull next. In the novel, Tobias labels Tris’s actions as that of a “Dauntless adrenaline junkie,” while I characterized her as someone who is folding in on herself by letting her grief slowly drown her.

When the suspense of battle no longer looms on the horizon between Erudite and the odd pairing of the factionless and Dauntless, Tris once again breaks away from Tobias, her friends, and follows her instincts to help Marcus and restore order to there once formal attempt at a utopian society. The strength and fearlessness that Tris and Tobias both possess left me feeling a sense of respect and support for these characters as they fought not only for the cause they believed in, but in the fact that they never once allowed their love for one another to fade or weaken.

Veronica Roth’s work in this novel is truly captivating and forces a reader to crave for the truth about the mysterious file that the Abnegation are withholding from everyone outside of the government. Also, the ongoing agony of secretly wanting to know the reasons as to why Tris’s parents would rather sacrifice themselves in front of her, their own daughter, in order to protect the contents of the file is truly staggering. Roth takes the futuristic plot line in an entirely unexpected direction as she leaves her readers with more than a cliff hanger, but rather a sense of bewilderment that humans are capable of so much more than pain and violence.

Reviewed by Nicole Williams

Book Information
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 5/1/2012
Pages: 544

Review: Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Summary
What if your whole world was a lie? What if a single revelation—like a single choice—changed everything? What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected? The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth's #1 New York Times bestselling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.

Review
The ability for one to hold and cherish memories for a single lifetime is one of the most significant capabilities of the human mind. Memories are a part of life that are not meant to be forgotten whether it comes to making difficult decisions in life, experiencing pain and grief, or even the radiant memories such as love, loyalty and friendship. There is no possible solution to turning off the part of the brain that holds memories, there is no way to remember every detail of a memory in perfect clarity, but there is the circumstance under which any person can choose to live for the moments worth fighting for. These moments that make life the constant tangle of mysterious beginnings and endings that we all live for in the end.

The dystopian society constructed of the five factions is gone. The factionless have taken over with a new dictatorship. The Allegiant have gathered and plan to restore the faction system that some believe is the rightful sense of government for the people. Tris and her friends decide that none of these options are best suited for themselves and decide to find out what lies outside the city. Once Tris, Tobias and their friends have made it to the world beyond their own, they realize that there is nothing but lies in their path. Lies on top of lies make up the truth to the city and the world that created their small and to the government, insignificant city. As the epic conclusion to the Divergent series presses on, you are left with a sense of protectiveness towards Tris and her friends as they find out the truth to our world and how the American society operates. It is very interesting to read about a society that has never existed before, but that once again is always one possibility out of many that our world could one day become.

Roth’s final book to the Divergent series is captivating as you follow the viewpoints of both Tris and Tobias and their messy romance mixed with degrees of friendship, betrayal and new beginnings. There is a binding sense of family values that are brought to the surface in this book as the memories of the past are mixed with the results of the Allegiant unfolding the revolution and Tris and her friends working to find a sense of peace that will keep as few people from dying as possible. I fell in love with this series from the first few chapters of the first book; watching Tris and her brother choose their faction and their new life, but never once thinking that their life would turn out to be a complete set of lies blanketed by experiences of love, friendship, loss, and a new form of society that only some will survive.

I recommend this series to anyone who enjoys characters that bring you as the reader to life when becoming involved in the roller coaster of emotional experiences that the main characters are forced to face when their world is turned upside down. I cannot imagine my world changing in such drastic measures as I was raised that the United States government and ways of life are set and will never change, but it is always enticing and extraordinary to become involved in a fictional world that will ignite a spark of endless possibilities within you.

Reviewed by Nicole Williams

Book Information
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 10/22/2013
Pages: 544