I read this on recommendation from a friend. It was the first of his three recommendations, so at least now I know not to read the other two. I recommended him [b:Too Like the Lightning|26114545|Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)|Ada Palmer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1443106959s/26114545.jpg|46061374] in exchange, as it is also set some hundred years in the future, people also organize into non-geographic factions, and it is also written in a first person perspective. I expect he will be as freaked out by my recommendation as I was by his!

My concern with Divergent even as he recommended it was that I expected it to be typical young adult "high school=universe" stuff. I mean I have read a few Harry Potters and Hunger Games, and it is not necessarily bad, but not something I am drawn to. He reassured me it was nothing like that.

But it is totally like that. An extremely unlikely world setup where you have to make your most important choice at 16. A violent crazy dystopia where 16-year-olds anyway act like they do today. Wikipedia tells me the book also concludes with teens from the class taking all critical roles in the crisis, including the main character saving the world.

I stopped reading about 120 pages in. Not because of the young adult cliches. Not even because of the super-weak world building. I quit because of the parts where Divergent deviates from the cliche. Surprisingly for a young adult novel, Divergent advocates for a very unusual set of values. Shooting guns makes you brave. Torturing children builds their characters. Brave people let their friends get tortured. Refusing to beat up children shows a weakness of character. Only cowards avoid risking their lives for no reason twice a day. Doing manual labor or driving a bus is worse than death. Later on the book apparently reveals that knowledge turns you evil too.

I do not mind a novel with a first-person character with a peculiar moral code. To be perfectly honest, Mycroft Canner is not exactly innocent either. It can serve all sorts of interesting purposes. I am somewhat bored even of first-person characters that have a cliche moral code. But it does not seem like it serves any purpose here. I think the author's judgements just leak through. It seems I prefer authors with relatively cliche morals.

There is also a super strong romantic plot. Strong in the sense that these two (teacher and 16-year-old student) lock eyes in every scene and get closer to each other by about an inch per page. The plot is so strange to me. There are two teachers who are kind of jerks: "Four" and Eric. The heroine immediately falls for "Four", but hates Eric. I was genuinely confused by what caused this. "Four" I think has piercings in his eyebrows while Eric has them in his ear. That could be an explanation.

Other reviews mention how little research is demonstrated in this book. Heck, I wonder if Roth has even seen a person jump off a moving train.



(Sorry for the repost. I accidentally deleted my review. I was just trying to remove this book from my to-read shelf...)