Divergent
2.0 Stars
1-1-2015

The story of a young Christian girl who endures various trials and tribulations at tertiary school, before finally being pushed too far and shooting half the people in her class.

The writing is very simple and spare, with a direct plot and constant action. This is one of the books virtues, as are its wide margins, large typeface, and generous kerning. :) Altogether it means you can read this 500 page book very quickly. The book is often compared to the Hunger Games, but it seems like kind of a down-market version of the Games and doesn't really manage to reach any of the peaks that Hunger Games did. The Hunger Games wasn't a great book, and it wasn't really aimed at me, but it was a competent book and I think several parts of it were really well done. This book doesn't really have any of that. Rather than being a well-thought out sort of pandering, it instead has a kind of paranoid, violent, and anti-knowledge vibe to it. Which I guess might be pandering too, but is a little too off for me to really appreciate as such? This book does manage to top the Hunger Games with its world building, which is even more completely absurd. It reminded me a tiny bit of Borges and some of his short stories about weird different ways in which societies could be ordered.