Since this movie is coming out, I figured it was finally time to get to this. I've seen so many mixed reviews of this. Some people absolutely love it, and some hate it violently. I decided I would go in with a blank slate and form my own opinion. Here's what I got:
Tris is a flawed heroine. I like flawed heroines. They are easier to relate to. But she is also too flawed at points. To the point you just don't see how she's going to be good at anything. Also, I find her hypocrisy enough to make me barf. She gets angry with others crying, but she cries all the time. And then she has the nerve to say she never cries: she's not the crying type.
She is Divergent, which at first made me a little skeptical. But soon I felt a bit better knowing it wasn't a Sooper Speshul trait. I get tired of those.
Now the world itself is interesting and boring and dumb all at once. I never understand the dystopian fad of fitting people into specific groups/casts/factions/districts. I'm more of a believer in The Walking Dead, everyone for themselves type of post-apocalypse world. The idea of 5 factions and only being able to believe in one is ridiculous, and expecting to just forget your family because "faction before blood" is something I can't wrap my head around. These are humans, not animals. We form attachments. And we believe multiple things! We can believe both piety and bravery, both knowledge and happiness. I don't get it.
Plus there was a serious lack of world-building. I'm guessing this was in Chicago, since I looked up Sears Tower. I'm guessing the marsh is what's left of the Great Lakes. I'm guessing about pretty much everything with this stupid story! It wasn't until halfway through we learned Amity isn't even inside the city walls. I'm still not sure where everything else lies. Erudite is in the center, I suppose, but Abnegation and Dauntless were so vague. And the factionless sector is before the Abnegation, but that doesn't help. It the city in a straight line? Maybe I'm brain dead or something, but I couldn't picture any of this.
I couldn't even picture a lot of the characters. I forgot what Four looked like besides his eyes and his height. There's a fine line between too much description/praise for the physical attractiveness and not enough description to the point all characters blur together. This one falls on the latter end.
The end is what got me. This was a 2 star read until the end. I wasn't expecting the war to start so soon. I expected that for the next book. I think defeating the simulation was way too easy, and the control room was far to unguarded. Stupidity? Or just too much cockiness? Who knows.
Oh, the GUNS! I'm a gun-toting redneck, and I was raised to shoot straight. Tris had never held a gun but somehow learned how to hit the target in a matter of a couple of hours. But the end of the book, she's blindly shooting behind herself and hitting people, killing them with random bullets fired without looking. Nope. Nope. Nope. Doesn't happen that way. It's a little thing called:
All in all, a 3 star read, since people died at the end. I always give props to authors that aren't afraid to kill main characters, or close secondary characters. I'm undecided if I liked this or not. I'm curious to know how everything works out, but it really had more problems that good traits. Too many things wrong with Tris, too little knowledge of everything else. She distrusts her own "friends" and seems to only be in Dauntless to prove a point. Meh. mediocre at best.
Side note: My copy of this book had almost 100 extra pages tacked on to the end. A few chapters from Insurgent, Q & A with Roth, discussion questions, faction quizzes, and a whole lot of other BS. Okay, Roth, your book wasn't that revolutionary. It doesn't warrant discussion questions, or a chapter of your "writing tips". This is just a dystopian YA novel riding the Hunger Games coattails and hoping for fame. Mockingjay didn't come with quizzes and group discussion ideas. Leave that shit to the readers. It wasn't that in-depth. Get over yourself. *sigh* I feel better. End. Rant.
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