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Apr 14, 2018ShonenBag rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
I searched for "Anime" and this came up... ?! This library should consider re-catagorizing this book... Though a Divergent anime would be awesome. (I doubt it would happen, though, since even though the plot lends itself to an anime, the underperformance of Insurgent at the box office, followed by the dumpster fire sequel to that, followed by the TV movie that nobody even remembers or has heard of means that there is NO WAY Divergent is a lucrative franchise anymore.) And it is sad that Divergent was treated so poorly with the films, because the books were actually quite rich in content. I will be the first on this comments section to admit that there were parts of Divergent that seemed overly-engineered to appeal ONLY to teens, and I myself read it at age 12, even then I could tell that the premise, character interactions (Especially the ones between adults), and the plot involving Dauntless drones could only have been taken seriously by overly emotional teenagers. Divergent is, then, a book for teenagers to read, and it is VERY enjoyable at that. I always like the premise of dividing society into drastically different factions, I think it is a somewhat satirical take on our world today. However, the execution of this concept is, like stated before, written in a way that would only appeal to teenagers. Divergent is enjoyable, it is fun to read, it is creative, it's just poorly executed. In the hands of a more capable author, it could have appealed to older audiences, but it seems as if Veronica Roth simply wanted to dumb down every concept so that we simply must assume that this society works before seeing how it doesn't work, and nowhere are we given proof that it works in the first place. This is why, even though I mostly enjoyed the book, I did not find it entertaining. It was too observational, too tensionless in places. I cannot stand as an observer to the events, Tris's voice is PAINFULLY laced with exposition for Divergent to be considered entertainment. All the times that she stops to explain exactly what she feels is a huge weight on the pacing of the otherwise fun story. All of these problems except for the over-marketing to teenagers are completely eliminated in the first film, as we see everything about the society at the start, and since Tris isn't narrating everything, we get to SEE and FEEL what she feels and sees. (Of course, in the 2nd and 3rd films, all of this goes out the window. They're both terrible.) In summary, these are the takeaways: 1) Divergent has too narrow of a target audience for it to be a classic 2) Divergent is, however, enjoyable and fun to read 3) Despite this, Divergent is not entertaining because there is too much exposition 4) Divergent does NOT work as a book, but it DOES work as a film 4.5) The Divergent film is, unlike the book, entertaining 5) THIS BOOK IS NOT ANIME. RE-FILE IT, PLEASE.