Divergent, Insurgent, & Allegiant – A Guy’s Review

Divergent, Insurgent, & Allegiant – A Guy’s Review

Originally I was going to make the argument that Game of Thrones could be considered a YA book, maybe next month. But I started reading Divergent, Insurgent, & Allegiant and decided to talk about that. Sadly I was hit by a kidney stone for the past 5 days. So this is going to be a short review of the series.

As a Teen Librarian, from time to time, I want to read what my patrons are reading be it good or bad. I did skip the Twilight Saga because I knew that wasn’t going to be my cup of tea at all. I did read the Hunger Game books and didn’t care for them too much, but thought they would make a great series of films, which somehow they failed at. I think they trailed too far away from the books when making them. I decided to try Veronica Roth Divergent Series. 

I found the series quite interesting. And worry not there are no spoilers here.

With Divergent I didn’t care for the writing style but the story really intrigued me. Authors all have 

 their own styles when it comes to writing and Roth’s style didn’t click with me, but that is okay. Not everyone is going to like an author’s style, but like I said there was something about the story and characters that kept me going. There was also a mystery in the story that I wanted the answer to – How did Chicago become the place it was now. It was always there in the background, but the author and characters never brought it to the forefront of the story because this was the world they knew and had only known.

Insurgent moved the characters, story and world forward. I will say at this point I had gotten use to the writing style and felt invested in the world and wanted to know what was going to happen next. I am not going to say what happened with in this chapter of the story was predicable but the story moved along the path, which the author set forward for it to travel. It was a middle, every much a middle.

Then Allegiant came along and took me by surprise. Roth drastically, I believe it was drastic, changed her method of telling the story of Tris and the Divergent world. The story was now being told by two different characters, which could now be seen as foreshadowing. As the book started I had to role my eyes because I felt like we were being told the same story all over again that was in Divergent and on some level we were. And I have talked to a lot of people that had a lot of issues with this book especially the first half of the book. I also talked to a lot of people that stopped reading this book or telling people just read the first two and forget the third. I think this is a mistake because Roth takes an incredible risk towards the end of the book. I am glad she did. I really liked it. I like it when the author takes risks and let the story goes where it needs to go; regardless how the readers or fans are going to feel.

After reading this series I found out about Four which is a series of short stories set in the world of Divergence. I am going to have to read them now, because I am intrigued to see where Roth takes us in these stories. I can’t wait to see when and where these stories are set before, after, during the events of these books.

I am might get yelled at for this, but I really did feel like this was Harry Potter meets a dystopian world. I am not saying Roth is as prolific as Rowling was in the Potterverse but there are similarities in Roth’s world.  The factions and houses. The “sorting” ceremonies. And little other things. I did like that no one was safe in Roth’s world; it made me care about the characters, once I realized this fact. Too many author’s love their characters so much that nothing bad can really happen to them. I guess there was a little bit of George R.R. Martin in these books.

I never saw Divergent in theaters but I am currently waiting for August when it comes to BLU Ray so I can see it. I hope the movie doesn’t stray far from the books and it takes the risks taken in the books. I don’t want to see the movies become Hollywoodize and make the movies all happy endings and sunshine and puppy dogs.

I would recommend this series to just about anyone looking for a good read.