Divergent

[NoahC]

Talk all about Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant. What are your opinions on the books? Why do you like it?

[GaT]

Allegiant ruined the series for me, to the point where I didn't go see the Divergent movie when it came out. It felt like Veronica Roth rewrote the entire series between Insurgent & Allegiant, & she turned Four, a strong, capable, in charge kind of guy, into Tobias, a whiny, insecure, momma's boy.  

[ramble]

I couldn't even read all of Allegiant. I read a review prior to trying & was so frustrated I just skimmed through some of it. I didn't go see Divergent either because I'm still frustrated with the whole thing. I wonder if Roth was trying to set her series apart from the standard YA series ending, but there had to be a better way than that.

[VanillaBear85]

I recently read the first book and skimmed through most of the last several chapters. I have no desire to continue reading the series.

[Fex]

Agreed, Allegiant was awful. Did she forget how to write? Skip the editing process? What happened? I thought the alternating POVs did NOT work! There was no difference between Triss' and Four's voices! I had hope the movie would be good, and they'd make all three, and completely rewrite for the last one. The movie wasn't terrible, but not great either, so my (far fetched?) idea is unlikely.

[Enero]

Agreed, Allegiant was awful. Did she forget how to write? Skip the editing process? What happened? I thought the alternating POVs did NOT work! There was no difference between Triss' and Four's voices! I had hope the movie would be good, and they'd make all three, and completely rewrite for the last one. The movie wasn't terrible, but not great either, so my (far fetched?) idea is unlikely.

 

I think the only reason why she had the alternating POVs was because of Tris' death in the end, but as you said there was no distinction between her voice and Four's.

 

I agree with the general consensus here. Allegiant was just terrible from start to finish. Though I have to say, I wasn't too surprised by the disappointment of the book due to Insurgent, which IMO wasn't all that great. Tris and Four spent the entire book running from one faction to the other, which added nothing to the story. Four started to become annoying, but I still loved his character. However, the same can't be said about Tris. She became a complete idiot. I think Roth was trying too hard to make Tris fearless, brave and self sacrificing which made it come off less than authentic. The same thing happened in Allegiant, most especially in Tris' final moments when she had this internal monologue about self sacrifice, what it means etc, which made her death scene even more awful and less genuine. But I digress, as I've said, I didn't think Insurgent was that great and could see Roth losing her handle on the story there. However, I didn't expect the final installment to be the disaster that it was. 

 

For this reason, I haven't seen the movie either. After reading the final book, I lost all interest in seeing this story revisited on the big screen.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Enero

[Tabbyclaw]

Slogged through the first one, got the second from the library for completion's sake (I had somehow gotten it into my head that there were only going to be two), quickly realized that A) it was not the last book, and B) I could not remember how the first had ended and didn't actually care. I think the first warning that these were not going to be good books was that the names of the factions aren't all the same part of speech.

[88Keys]

Read the first book.  It was....OK.  But it wasn't compelling enough to make me want to keep going.  Pages and pages of training in how to be dauntless.  The last chapter or two, something interesting finally happens, but I actually found that last part boring. 

 

And I think what bugged me most about Divergent was that EVERYTHING was a cliche. It's like the author thought "Hmm.  What would brave people do?  I know!  They would punch each other and perform stunts to show how fearless they are!  Smart people?  They wear glasses and read books all the time!"  It just seemed very amateurish and shallow to me. 

[Tabbyclaw]

It's like the author thought "Hmm.  What would brave people do?  I know!  They would punch each other and perform stunts to show how fearless they are!

 

And wave their loads and loads of guns around with no concept of firearm safety, don't forget that bit. And wear black leather and get tattoos. The planning process for Dauntless appears to have begun and ended with asking a group of eight-year-old boys what makes someone tough.

[Dejana]

Read the first book.  It was....OK.  But it wasn't compelling enough to make me want to keep going.  Pages and pages of training in how to be dauntless.  The last chapter or two, something interesting finally happens, but I actually found that last part boring. 

 

And I think what bugged me most about Divergent was that EVERYTHING was a cliche. It's like the author thought "Hmm.  What would brave people do?  I know!  They would punch each other and perform stunts to show how fearless they are!  Smart people?  They wear glasses and read books all the time!"  It just seemed very amateurish and shallow to me. 

Not that all young writers are bad/mediocre, but knowing Veronica Roth's age/generation puts a lot of this series' flaws into context. She's a peer of thousands of other tweens/teens who were writing Harry Potter fanfic as they waited for the next book/movie to come out. The writing here seems to be on roughly the same level of depth that you often encountered in that realm.

 

I really don't care that she killed off Tris, but IMO a series can't build a legacy on a twist like that. Once a series isn't new anymore, people often come to it already spoiled on certain details but they still want to try it, anyway.  If there's no there there, beyond, oooh, you killed off the lead, then all people are left to judge is how the story was told. And if killing off the YA fantasy/sci-fi hero becomes all the rage in other series, someone will probably do a better job of it than Roth did in Allegiant, and/or that story development will become its own cliché 5-10 years down the road.

Edited June 11, 2014 by Dejana

[Quilt Fairy]

I liked Divergent a lot, probably because it takes place in my hometown of Chicago. I found the premise interesting (until it was explained in book 3 and turned out to be boring and of no import in the end). I could visualize the El trains traveling through the Loop, the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier and even the zipline from the top of the Hancock building down to Lake Shore Drive. I worked near the Merchandise Mart. I never could figure out where Dauntless HQ was supposed to be, however.

 

That being said, it was easy to see a number of amateur (fan-fic type) mistakes:

1. Four and Tris are only 2 years apart but she doesn't recognize him. None of the factions are large, and in a faction that values conformity above all else I don't buy that Tobias was home-schooled.
2. Four has only been in Dauntless himself for 2 years but is already an instructor and something of a legend.
3. Assuming the Choosing ceremony is only once a year, Dauntless only expects 20 initiates and only accepts half of those. This leads to 2 easy conclusions that anyone could see: Dauntless should be the smallest faction - by far - and Dauntless wannabes are going to form the large majority of the Factionless.
4. The way that Roth was killing off Tris' fellow Dauntless with reckless abandon there shouldn't have been any left by the end. It's one thing to kill off a few nameless 'redshirts', but Roth killed off many, many of the main and featured characters who she had spent a lot of time creating backstories for. I was sad time and time again when yet another character I liked bit the dust, long before Tris died. (And woe to any boy who liked Christina!)
5. Dauntless training is only 30 days and they're fully weapons qualified. And Tris doesn't even get to enjoy being a Dauntless for 24 hours before the Faction War begins.
6. The huge cliff-hanger of Book 2 comes to absolutely nothing in Book 3.

 

I could go on but I'll stop there, except for one of my biggest gripes: In Chicago, it's Madison Street, not Madison Avenue. When they were chasing around the downtown area in Insurgent, I was pulled out of the story every time they went along Madison Avenue. As a Chicago native, Roth should know this.

 

I do most of my reading by listening to Audiobooks. The Divergent series has a good narrator, and I listened to the first 2 books many times. The 3rd book I listened to once and returned to Audible. I haven't seen the movie (I understand they fixed a few of my issues such as Four being only 18), I'll probably wait until it's free on cable.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Quilt Fairy

[Unraveled]

I agree with everyone else. The first one was good enough to read the rest. I just wanted to finish the series, and I just could not. Allegient was in my eReader for months. I read a few chapters and struggled to read the rest. I finally gave up and read the plot in Wikipedia.

 

One thing I didn't understand was the ages of Tris and her brother Caleb. Were they fraternal twins? I never really got the bonding between the siblings beyond the "we share blood."

[ramble]

I donated Divergent & Insurgent today. I never bought Alleigent because I read reviews online prior to ordering (thank goodness!) & got so angry I decided I just didn't care. I eventually read a synopsis. I liked the first two books but without a conclusion that I find satisfying I didn't want to reread them or keep them.

[NoahLocity]

I agree with everyone else. The first one was good enough to read the rest. I just wanted to finish the series, and I just could not. Allegient was in my eReader for months. I read a few chapters and struggled to read the rest. I finally gave up and read the plot in Wikipedia.

 

One thing I didn't understand was the ages of Tris and her brother Caleb. Were they fraternal twins? I never really got the bonding between the siblings beyond the "we share blood."

They are both sixteen. They are siblings, but not twins. It take nine months to carry a baby, so Natalie and Andrew must have gotten to Tris right after making Caleb.

[Unraveled]

They are both sixteen. They are siblings, but not twins. It take nine months to carry a baby, so Natalie and Andrew must have gotten to Tris right after making Caleb.

That makes a lot more sense. I figured that it was all young people that were a certain age (I guess 16) that made their choice every year.

[Cocoo]

Personally, I loved a lot both first ones Volume. But I didn't read the third (Although I have it).
Because,when I went on another forum, I discovered " the thing "! So, I don't know if I should read it or not...

 

[GaT]

Personally, I loved a lot both first ones Volume. But I didn't read the third (Although I have it).

Because,when I went on another forum, I discovered " the thing "! So, I don't know if I should read it or not...

Go ahead & read it, why shouldn't you be just as enraged as everybody else? :-)

[lucindabelle]

I read divergent because my 12 year old niece insisted. It seemed like a pale shadow of the giver. I didn't believe that human beings would willingly separate themselves into artificial personality traits (having read synopses of later books, seems I was right) and I'm so over the Totally Awesome Boyfriend plot.

Did not read books two and three, but did read synopses, and find me just.... Dumb. Didn't find the writing to be good. One thing with all the dystopian and fantasy ya books now is that some of the writing is really mediocre, which wasn't the case when ya was a smaller market. This kind of makes the hunger games look like. Hemingway.

[Cocoo]

Go ahead & read it, why shouldn't you be just as enraged as everybody else? :-)

Yeah but I'm already demoralized by what I saw on the other forum. But I'll read it anyway at one time or another, so I'll be raging with you guys.

[monef]

Ah Allegiant, that awfulness that took forever to slog through.

[wanderingstar]

I'll probably read Allegiant too - just to complete the awfulness trifecta.