My Review: Divergent Series

I made a mistake Saturday night. In my defence I did not know that opening IMdB would cause me such pain and suffering. You know how it goes, you open the trailer section and then it leads you to go on YouTube and next thing you know you have spent two hours hopping on from one video to another. But, this time it ended differently because I am an idiot. I watched the trailer of Divergent. I liked the trailer of Divergent which lead to me downloading the trilogy and reading it non-stop the whole of Sunday.

I finished it by Sunday night. I had power read my way through 3 books thinking that they would have a happy ending. I know, I sound like a whiny 15 year old but you should understand from my point of view. I am reading a YA sci-fi novel not a serious non-fiction (I am giving the whole non-fiction genre a try, which is going rather well these days). I like reading dystopian novels because even though the story is so bleak it gives you hope. I don’t read these books for their literary value; I have other options for that. This is a plainly a pleasure read for me.

It’s not that I hated the series, I liked the story. I liked the character development in the first two books. I was eager to start the third one. But, somewhere between the second book and the third the author changed her style. She suddenly wanted to be more edgy, so she went massacring the book Red-wedding-style. She just offed her character without any reason! I am not saying I am fan girl who wants happy endings. I am ready to bite the bullet if I see a plausible effect it has on the whole story, I don’t want characters dying in the middle of the book for no apparent reason other than the author trying to improve her street cred. I am not saying that you should not read the books but I just want to tell you how it feels when people pull off the rug under you just because they feel like it.

Writing YA pulp has become a business these days, be it contemporary fiction (50 Shades), paranormal fiction (your twilights, vampire academies et al) and sci-fi fiction (Hunger games). It’s not like a David Foster Wallace novel where the story is lengthy with complex characters which need your complete attention. There is a standard formula to it that the more books you read the more you realize that it was just the same story with slightly different characters. I kinda feel sad about the quality of work but I guess in the end, if it’s not broken why fix it? I think in all my two years of foray into the whole Kindle books I can honestly say that I found around two to three authors who made an attempt to create three dimensional characters. They prey on people like me who need closure because there is always a cliff hanger in the end of these books. They are never stand-alone. Even, if they have the supporting cast gets their own stories which means I have go back and read them too because I am a masochist when it comes to leaving books in between. I guess I am their target audience.

The premise of the series is great, dividing the society based on the most dominant character trait in a person. How would our society be if we enforce such tenets? Dividing people by the things they excel in? Would that make our governments better by giving power people who are inherently selfless? How would it be effective? How would this be implemented?  I have a lot of questions and the more I think about it, this might be a future for us in 100 years, resetting the older values for new ones. I am reading Shock Doctrine which talks about disaster capitalism, whose basic premise is that society can only change its nature under duress. Changing the way things work can only happen where there is an overhanging threat on everyone. Change in ideology cannot happen unless people feel that their basic needs are being affected. This is what we see in the Divergent world. War has ravaged the planet which leads to such a society where your genetic traits decide what you can or cannot do.

I loved the series till book two but after reading the third one I don’t think I am going to recommend it any one because I don’t want people to come back and beat me up. It happened when I insisted K to watch the Downton Abbey Christmas special. I will not make that mistake again.

Anyways, the reason for the rant is that I can’t punch someone in the face like the Dauntless. So, I can only take out my frustrations via this blog post.