Divergent Series

The Divergent series is my first post about a "teen series."  If you are inclined to enjoy books like George Orwell's 1984, James Dashner's Maze Runner, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games, or any other alternate government storyline, then Veronica Roth has inserted herself seamlessly into the category and created an interesting read.

Once again, like Hunger Games, we have a female heroine.  Beatrice Prior is coming of age in a controlled government who believes in dividing its citizens into factions based on personality traits.  Depending on your natural reaction to certain situations you could either be placed in Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless or Erudite.  If you look these words up in the dictionary they give a perfect description of the personality types that would fit best into each faction.  If you are an anomaly and do not distinctly fit into one of those 5 factions, you would be considered to be Divergent, hence the name of the book, and the officials of the government would consider you to be dangerous.  You mean a government might fear someone they can't put in a box or doesn't fit their definition of "normal?"  How uncanny!!!

In this series you will find strength, betrayal, competition, irrationality, over-rationality and the need for full disclosure in any relationship, whether it be personal or governmental.  As with many of the young adult series that are out in the world recently, and frankly with any book out there at all, there is a love story woven into the undercurrent of this series, but it adds to the struggle and the tension of the story.

It is a quick read, but one that should keep you interested the entire time.  Roth doesn't get bogged down in the mundane over-description of some other authors.  She gets to the point and keeps the adrenaline running throughout keeping you interested and the pages turning.