Divergent

This was the only book I read on my holiday apart from Guide books and maps.  Anyway it's been a while since I finished it and to be honest I can't remember much.  It was a sort of 'lite' version of Brave New World. For me it was more Enid Blyton/cartoonesque than hard hitting dystopian teenage fiction.

The idea though was great, people are born into one faction with certain traits which you have to follow and live by.  For instance Abnegation are a group of people who only think of the welfare of others and lead grey, puritanical lives, whereas candour are a group who believe that the most important quality is telling the truth at all times.   Anyway these groups take on new recruits when kids turn 16 and Beatrice ends up in the Dauntless faction,the  place where people have no fear and happily spend their free time jumping off moving trains and fighting their deep fears in simulated worlds. To be honest these different factions felt more like Houses in Harry Potter's school.  Good old Beatrice or Tris as she is known ends up being divergent, that means she has the brains and ability to behave in different ways depending on the circumstances. hence she doesn't fit easily into one group. Being divergent is very dangerous...poor old Tris is in serious trouble.

Anyway, the story goes on and on and to be honest I lost the will to live a bit whilst reading. (Although I was sucked in and had to finish it!)  This book is a semi- clone of The Hunger Games because characterisation is weak and completely one dimensional. The only thing which matters is an urgent plot full of strange violence.( Violence which failed to make me feel scared or raise my blood pressure. Violence which managed somehow to seem pretty damn lame, tame and dull.  maybe I'm just too dark!!!)   There was a rather annoying love interest theme too involving lots of looking at each other longingly, sighing and stroking bits of each other's bodies. The plot was really underdeveloped. This could have been so much better if the author had created a more believable world.  To be honest the Chicago of this awful future was not described at all.  Most of the plot just happened in the equivalent of a Hogwart's school playground.  Anyway the end was quite good. One ,because the story finally got fairly interesting and two, because it was the end.