On Dauntless: A Review of Divergent by Veronica Roth

This was one of those books that just kept popping up everywhere. Everyone that I asked insisted that I would love it, and they were not wrong.

Beatrice Prior has grown up in a faction called Abnegation, a subculture that believes in selflessness above all things. On her sixteenth birthday, she must choose a permanent faction--remain in Abnegation, or transfer to one of the four other factions. An aptitude test, meant to tell her which faction would suite her best, instead reveals something else entirely. Beatrice is divergent--she doesn't fit neatly into a category. Not fully understanding what this means, but knowing that it could lead to becoming an outcast, Beatrice makes the decision to enter Dauntless, the courage faction. Joining the Dauntless tests her physical, emotional, and psychological fortitude.

Positive Comments

I'm a sucker for a good training montage.  The journey to becoming a Dauntless was fascinating to me. Beatrice changes her name to Tris, sheds drab clothing in favor of sexier items, gets tattooed, learns to fight and use weapons, and starts to look inside herself for a deeper kind of bravery. She meets friends. She starts to fall for an older guy, named Four. And holy hell, there's not love triangle! What I'm saying, in a nutshell, is that I loved Tris' character arc, her personality, everything.

The relationship building with Four is about as good as you can expect in a book where the romance is not the main point. He's a likeable, layered character in his own right. More importantly, I liked that he respected and believed in Tris. He gets protective, but at the same time he trusts her to hold her own. I loved that.

Critical Comments

Some of the logic behind the world building is...well, it's not logical. So...having these factions somehow promotes peace? How? And the factions themselves are almost silly in their polarized ways of life. I chuckled a bit at some of the Dauntless behavior. They don't go to trains stations to board trains, they just jump on and off. And they leap off of buildings and climb stuff and pierce their bodies for no good reason...Basically, all of the arbitrary senseless displays of courage that you could possibly think of. I love the result of the world building, but you have to turn your brain off to accept that this world could ever exist.

Recommendation

If you like dystopians, this is a must read. If you like YA fiction in general, it's a must read. With a tough heroine, a solid story, and a sweet romance, I can't recommend this enough. 4.5 stars.