Divergent, Day 4

*Long exhale* *Deep breath*


Ahem.


I remember back when I was reading Twilight, how the first two thirds or so of the first book were completely dominated by romance drama ("I'm a vampire" "I don't care, I love you forever anyway" "You shouldn't, Bella" "But Edward!" "Okay, fine, come play baseball with my family", etc.) and then, out of nowhere, suddenly there were evil vampires and the book was trying desperately to be an suspenseful action story complete with a vampire getting ripped limb-from-limb and Bella being in "danger" and stuff.


Divergent is in no way guilty of the same desperate shoehorning-in of plot. Nay, there were hints and nudges and red flags from the first page that clearly indicated that something big was brewing that was going to boil over before the end. It was just completely unclear what was brewing. Basically, I got within a hundred pages of the book's end, and I knew that something was going to happen, but I had barely any idea what that something was going to be. In short, I could surmise that, in a way just the slightest bit similar to Twilight, 400 or so pages of comparatively little action (although, you know, in Twilight it's 400 pages of overblown schmaltzy romance weirdness and in Divergent it's 400 pages of hardcore strength-and-resilience training with only brief interludes of schmaltzy romance) were about to be followed by 100 pages or so of nonstop action, suspense, and shocking twists (although I figured that, unlike in Twilight, the action would actually be nonstop, the suspense might actually be suspenseful, and the twists could actually be shocking).


I'll admit I was a bit reluctant to read those last 100 pages (which is why this post is so late).


And I think I had a right to be.


I finished the book several hours ago, but I didn't want to write right away because I was feeling a tad overwhelmed by the events of the final chapters. Not overwhelmed by the darkness, mind you; I read The Book Thief and was (mostly) okay, I can handle a bit of fictional dystopian violence. Rather I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of things that happened, both expected and unexpected. So much was crammed into those last 100 pages that I'm having trouble deciding what my overall opinion of the book is.


So I've decided not to decide. I'm withholding any kind of final verdict about the series until the very end.


It'll be a few days before the Insurgent reviews start showing up because, for some bizarre reason, when I placed my holds I was hold 8 on Divergent, hold 3 on Allegiant...... and hold 27 on Insurgent. I have no idea why the second book is so wildly popular at the moment, but it still hasn't come in yet. It's actually kind of nice, because this way I have a few days to let the ending of Divergent really sink in, and also to catch up on some of my other reading.


So...... see you sometime.


~Pearl Clayton


PS. Aloisa - I share your sentiments concerning Will.