The two books Divergent and Insurgent, by Veronica Roth are young adult novels and the first 2 books of the Divergent Trilogy. The stories are set in future dystopian Chicago where society is divided into 5 factions depending on their virtues: Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). “Divergent” is when someone has an aptitude for more than one faction. This is considered abnormal and dangerous complete with children’s scary stories about them.
Divergent is about Tris choosing Dauntless over her Abnegation family of birth, the initiation and relationships the new faction offers. This is a YA novel, so there is that focus on teen romance even in a violent world. By the end we learn that the Erudite faction is trying to destroy Abnegation and enslave Dauntless to destroy the Divergent.
Insurgent picks up the story immediately and the conflict between factions continues. Tris discovers that there could be information about “what’s outside the fence” they all live in and how this relates to the Erudite war. Tris is pretty angsty in this one: guilty over killing her friend when he was under a simulation serum and was going to kill her, frustrated over her boyfriend, missing her parents who died at the end of Divergent, and on and on. At the end, they do find information that tells them their society was set up away from the rest of the world so Tris’s world could regain a moral sense but when there ware enough Divergent, the fence should be opened and they should rejoin the human race.
This obviously wanted to be Hunger Games – there so many parallels. Divergent is being made into a movie to be released March 2014 with Kate Winslet as the the evil Erudite leader.
Allegiant, published in Oct 2013 will be continue and finish the saga. I’ll read just to see where it goes.
