3.3 - Divergent

After reading so many dystopian novels that one would think I'd die of boredom if I ever read another, I decided to give this exciting genre another chance and hope that it will manage to surprise me again as it has done so many times before.

To prevent conflict and create a stable and peaceful society, the future government decides to split all population into five factions. Each faction focuses on and values certain positive aspects of a human personality: Abnegation values selflessness, Erudite intelligence, Candor honesty, Amity peace and Dauntless bravery. Following the motto: "Faction before blood", at the age of 16, each individual gets to choose the faction that he or she will belong to for the rest of their lives. Choices are made, families are separated, and children are raised by the ideologies and principles of their chosen faction.
The story is told from the viewpoint of sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior. Being a member of Abnegation, Beatrice often struggles with completely surrendering herself to others. At the day of the test designed to help her choose the appropriate faction, Beatrice is informed that the test didn't work on her. She is rendered "Divergent"- exhibiting traits of multiple factions. Unprepared and confused, Beatrice is forced to make the decision between staying in Abnegation, or leaving her family in pursuit of a completely different lifestyle. All she knows is that Divergence is dangerous, for her and for everyone else. Then, on the day of the Choosing Ceremony, Beatrice decides to join the Dauntless. She is introduced to the dauntless headquarters and the tough, dangerous, exciting daily life of the dauntless members. Joining other "transfers"- people that have decided to leave the faction they where they were raised in favour of another, she is lead through the difficult life-threatening initiation process, competing against her fellow transfers as well as dauntless-born initiates in hope of becoming a dauntless member. Throughout this dangerous journey into the great unknown, Beatrice slowly starts to uncover the secrets behind arising conflicts between and within factions while having to cope with the struggles of the daily life of a dauntless initiate and with the threatening reality of being labelled "Divergent", discovering new powers and benefits that arise from this fact, and even experiencing some unexpected romance.

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I wish so much to say that this book has surprised me, but I'm afraid that too many futuristic dystopian novels have really gotten on my brain and the excitement from reading an awesome, original, action-packed story has long since gone. However similar to books like "Hunger Games" "Divergent" may be, I must say that I consider this book quite overrated. The writing style didn't surprise me at all: it was bland, simplistic and uninteresting: I'm not saying that this is positively bad, in this case, actually, the author managed to create a quite convincing voice of a shy and frightened sixteen-year-old girl. The fact that the writing style was so unoriginal required an exciting plot to keep the reader interested, which was also, even if only partially (more of the action, less of the originality), provided. Nevertheless, I feel as if this book was just a different version of something I've read so many times before: frightened character in life-threatening situations, fighting to stay alive, slowly finding out the world is corrupted and discovering the love of their life on the way. I just can't seem to find anything that would make "Divergent" unique. Sure, the book is a good example of its genre (ignoring the rushed ending and certain unexplored characters and issues....), but if you have read dystopian novels before ("Hunger Games" in particular) and are on the hunt for something new and exciting, its really unnecessary to bother with reading this book. If you haven't and are totally fine with reading something too similar to what has already been written, "Divergent" surely won't disappoint you.