Summer is the perfect time to read those long books you can’t commit to during the school year — Game of Thronesor Crime and Punishment — but it’s also the perfect time to read books with a little bit less literary merit, the type you can burn through in a few hours on the beach. That makes this the perfect season to read the Divergent series by Veronica Roth.
Many have called Roth’s series the next Hunger Games. The story focuses on a teenage girl in a dystopian Chicago who finds herself in the middle of something bigger than she could have imagined and resorts to violence to make sense of it all. The first book, Divergent, came out in 2011; the second, Insurgent, was released last year, and the last,Allegiant, will come out this October. The movie adaptation of the first book is currently being filmed, so now is the perfect time to break into the series so you can tell everyone you read it before it was cool.
The teenage girl in question is named Beatrice Prior. In Beatrice’s Chicago, the city is divided into five factions based on core values: Erudite (intelligence), Amity (peacefulness), Candor (honesty), Dauntless (bravery) and Abnegation (selflessness), Beatrice’s home. Every child in the city is raised within a faction to learn to live out its value. At 16, they’re tested to decide which faction they are best suited to and then, in a very dramatic ceremony, must decide whether to stay in their current faction or to abandon it — and their families — forever.
Not surprisingly, Beatrice decides to leave hers. The first book mostly details her revelations about how messed up the faction system (and her particular faction) is. What’s occurred — and what’s become clear to Beatrice — is that each group has taken an ideal that’s good on paper and brought it to such an extreme that it’s become bad. The Dauntless mistake recklessness for bravery, the Erudite become arrogant, the Candor do not seek truth, the Amity are cowardly and the Abnegation are needlessly ascetic.
Beatrice is a fantastic character; like Katniss Everdeen before her, she’s morally ambiguous and always struggling to understand the right thing to do but is often unable to do it. She can be greedy and selfish, reckless and inconsiderate. And she’s strong — physically and mentally — granting young adult fiction another heroine to join the ranks of Katniss and Hermione Granger. Beatrice is surrounded by a fantastic supporting cast as well — the mysterious Four, who struggles to find his place in a society where the dividing lines are harsh, her friends and fellow faction initiates Will and Christina, and the society’s ruthless leaders. Beatrice also finds herself in the middle of a crazy romance (because duh), which is actually pretty well done.
Don’t mistake compelling characters for a well-written story, because the next Great American NovelDivergent is not. Themes are a bit heavy-handed, some things come a bit out of nowhere and Roth often favors telling over showing. In this case though, it’s perfect if you’re searching for a summer read — intense brain function will not be required, but there’s still a lot of cling to thematically which provides for plenty of escapism. The book poses a few big questions that are fun to think about, but the series doesn’t offer anything life-changing.
The second book is where everything starts to fall apart for the society and sets things up for a stunning finale. I honestly have no idea where this is going to go, which is awesome (in general, the plot is pretty unpredictable, partially because Beatrice acts so rashly at times). It also ends on a great cliffhanger, which has me anxious for the series wrap-up in October.
If you’re looking for a quick, thrilling read that isn’t exactly high-quality literature, but isn’t complete garbage either, then pick up Divergent and immerse yourself in a world of knife-throwing, roof-jumping and steamy romance.
