Though I am quick and eager to be done with this project (the perks of doing 75% of it in one sitting) I return for a final installment.
Divergent was by no means a bad book, especially when you consider that it's Roth's first book. It was smooth, thought provoking and pleasant enough on the first read. The concepts are good, but on a second read the plot becomes rushed; the characters, weak. The most solid characters are probably Peter, Christina, and Uriah--all who would have provided better mains, in my opinion, but hey--not my book. If the book stayed more to analyzing humans at their core I would have enjoyed it unbelievably more. Once Tobias and Tris got together it went down hill, and I really came to dislike both characters.
One month =/= love.
One month can equate to limerence. One month can equate infatuation. One month can equate hormonal lust. (Two of which are more likely than the other).
On a chemical level, love can't come that quickly. Your brain has to rewire itself, must receive reciprocation (unless it's aggression affection) and your serotonin takes time to drop. This was one of my biggest issues with the book. I HATE "love" that comes on too quickly, too strongly, or unnecessarily. Tris and Tobias don't even spend very much time getting to know each other, and only have a few meaningful isolated conversations throughout the text but she equates her emotional loss of him to the physical loss of her mother.
Maybe I could stomach it if it hadn't been for that, but that completely destroyed Tris in my eyes. I have my own reasons for thinking so, but a parent who sacrifices any amount for their child, let alone their life, is an example of a saint. Tobias is just a boy, whom--I predict in the third book--she will have a falling out with because she's 16. Family is forever, by choice or otherwise, and Tris had something beautiful, that she quite honestly took for granted.
The weakest part of this book is it's character development. The sentences are simple, but varied enough to guide eyes through text. No vocabulary was particularly challenging and descriptions were clear. Roth did a great job of creating a solid world by tying in elements that the reader--especially midwestern ones like ourselves--could affiliate with. It made the scenario imaginable and ponderous. Her only fault was the characters she made to fill her world, which were rather flat and sloppy. She has emotion there, but she doesn't convey it very well in my opinion.
Int the end, it's her first novel, and it's extraordinary for the amount of experience she has. It's not a book that's unpleasant to read, but becomes more so upon deep inspection. I would recommend it to people looking for a thought-provoking read around my age and lexile level. It's not hard, and is easy on the eyes and mind.
I'd give it a 7.2 out of 10, as after the fact, it simply wasn't my cup of tea.
Divergent was by no means a bad book, especially when you consider that it's Roth's first book. It was smooth, thought provoking and pleasant enough on the first read. The concepts are good, but on a second read the plot becomes rushed; the characters, weak. The most solid characters are probably Peter, Christina, and Uriah--all who would have provided better mains, in my opinion, but hey--not my book. If the book stayed more to analyzing humans at their core I would have enjoyed it unbelievably more. Once Tobias and Tris got together it went down hill, and I really came to dislike both characters.
One month =/= love.
One month can equate to limerence. One month can equate infatuation. One month can equate hormonal lust. (Two of which are more likely than the other).
On a chemical level, love can't come that quickly. Your brain has to rewire itself, must receive reciprocation (unless it's aggression affection) and your serotonin takes time to drop. This was one of my biggest issues with the book. I HATE "love" that comes on too quickly, too strongly, or unnecessarily. Tris and Tobias don't even spend very much time getting to know each other, and only have a few meaningful isolated conversations throughout the text but she equates her emotional loss of him to the physical loss of her mother.
Maybe I could stomach it if it hadn't been for that, but that completely destroyed Tris in my eyes. I have my own reasons for thinking so, but a parent who sacrifices any amount for their child, let alone their life, is an example of a saint. Tobias is just a boy, whom--I predict in the third book--she will have a falling out with because she's 16. Family is forever, by choice or otherwise, and Tris had something beautiful, that she quite honestly took for granted.
The weakest part of this book is it's character development. The sentences are simple, but varied enough to guide eyes through text. No vocabulary was particularly challenging and descriptions were clear. Roth did a great job of creating a solid world by tying in elements that the reader--especially midwestern ones like ourselves--could affiliate with. It made the scenario imaginable and ponderous. Her only fault was the characters she made to fill her world, which were rather flat and sloppy. She has emotion there, but she doesn't convey it very well in my opinion.
Int the end, it's her first novel, and it's extraordinary for the amount of experience she has. It's not a book that's unpleasant to read, but becomes more so upon deep inspection. I would recommend it to people looking for a thought-provoking read around my age and lexile level. It's not hard, and is easy on the eyes and mind.
I'd give it a 7.2 out of 10, as after the fact, it simply wasn't my cup of tea.
2 comments:
I agree with the one month =/= love 100%. I think that the romance of the book was extremely unrealistic and the storyline itself was very repetitive. Also, I was wondering: If you didn't care for the book too much, why were you so eager to read the second in the series?
Truthfully, I don't get much time to read! I have a set schedule of classics that I feel I must read before college, all of which I need to take notes on and analyze in order to fully understand. When reading Salinger or Hawthorne it can be really hard to move through the text because you have to adjust to a lot of winding sentences, different lingo, and put yourself in the mindset of a time other than today; since this was such an easy read, and also academic, I enjoyed the act of reading it, I suppose! I'm really not too good at reading, so things I can eat up quickly, I enjoy. o v o
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