Oh look! More dystopian novels!

Divergent and Insurgent
By Veronica Roth

Ta da! Even more dystopian YA novels! All right, fine, maybe I’m a bit of a dystopia fan…

Divergent is set in dystopian (surprise!) Chicago, where everything is divided into five factions:  Candor, the honest, Abnegation, the selfless, Erudite, the intelligent, Dauntless, the brave, and Amity, the peaceful. Each year, every sixteen year-old has to choose which faction they will spend the rest of their lives in. Divergent centres on Beatrice Prior who is – you guessed it – sixteen, and it’s decision making time – she has to choose between staying with her family or actually doing what she wants to do. But that’s just the beginning! She then has to fight her way through the super-competitive initiation process (with a name change to Tris in between) to actually get into the faction and get the “AW YEAH I’M IN A FACTION” badge. Yes I made that last part up.

Insurgent, to sum it up in a few sentences:  Tries to stop revolution. Even more fight sequences. Oh yeah, she has a boyfriend now.

I really enjoyed Divergent.  Tris was a strong, witty realistic character, and was the sort of character that made you wish you could play her in a movie. It’s also well written and man, the fight scenes are awesome. And seriously, who doesn’t want to be friends with someone who responds like this:

“It must be because you're so approachable", I say flatly. "You know, like a bed of nails."

And then came the sequel.

Insurgent is still just as well written and maybe funnier than Divergent, this pretty much sets up the tone of the humour:

“Got that gun?” Peter says to Tobias.
 “No,” says Tobias, “I figured I would shoot the bullets out of my nostrils, so I left it upstairs.”  

And Insurgent has even more fight scenes, but I have one problem: Tris.

Okay, so  that’s not entirely true, Tris herself is fine, it’s Tris in relation to her boyfriend, who henceforth shall be called Fred so as not to reveal any semi predictable spoilers. Where was I? Oh, right, Tris begins to go off the rails (which in itself is perfectly respectable, every dystopian hero has the right to spiral), but all of a sudden, Fred the boyfriend starts defining their relationship, and telling her he’ll only be her boyfriend when she’s a specific way, and now you have this feisty strong character, who’s all wimpy and pathetic around her boyfriend. You want to grab her by the shoulders and yell “YOU ARE A STRONG CHARACTER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”  But then you feel bad because the rest of the book is so good and then you get a headache.

Also, the books are in audiobook form, and are narrated by Emma Galvin, who narrated one of my other favourite books and has a really good voice for the character.

I like the book, and I don’t like the book. Gah! I need a panadol.

Feisty chick-o-meter: 9/10 7/10

Age Rating: 16+

Rating: 8/10

Stand alone or series: Series

Book or audiobook: Audiobook