Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Well, that was disappointing.

When Divergent came out in 2011, there was a ridonkulous amount of hype around it. Every review I read said it was ah-mazing. Some said it was as good as or better than fellow YA dystopia The Hunger Games. Needless to say, I had very high expectations. They were definitely not met.

In an unspecified future, society has been divided up into five factions, with each one placing one particular value above all others. Tris has grown up in Abnegation, where selflessness rules, but she's always been fascinated by the brave Dauntless. When the time comes for her to choose the faction she will spend the rest of her life with, she discovers she's actually Divergent, excelling in more than one area. It's dangerous to be Divergent, apparently.

I didn't buy it. The worldbuilding was very weak and didn't make sense to me at all. Why would society divide into factions to keep peace, when division brings the opposite? Moreover, why is being Divergent so rare, when in reality most people are good at and do value more than one thing? It's more rare to find someone who only has one strength! After all bravery, intelligence, honesty, selflessness and peacefulness are not all mutually exclusive.

Divergent was slow to start with, and the majority of the plot is taken up with training and tests that kind of go nowhere. It picks up towards the end, but takes awhile to get there. I really didn't like Tris at first - she seemed cold and unkind. She grew on me a bit but I didn't love her. The chemistry between her and Four, the love interest, was great in a couple of scenes but it all felt very predictable, like I'd read it 50 times before.

It was entertaining overall but OK at best. I really don't see what all the fuss is about.

Rating: 3/5

Eye Candy
I saw Teresa Palmer as Tris and Zac Efron as Four.

Fine Print
Genre Young Adult Dystopia
Published: 2011, Harper Collins
Get It: Book Depository

The Movie Was Better: I Am Number Four

Oh dear.  My feelings for the movie were pretty much the same as for the book: meh.

 

I went in anticipating that I Am Number Four would be more exciting as a film than a book, and it was. I liked it a lot more. But I still didn't love it. And I still didn't hate it. I still didn't really feel anything for it. It wasn't bad enough to enjoy in a snarky way, and it wasn't good enough to enjoy at face value. It was just OK. And that was kinda disappointing.

Surprisingly, it was pretty different to the book. The main gist was the same, of course, but there were a gazillion little changes that I wasn't expecting (potential spoilers ahead)....

Changes that worked

• We see Six a lot earlier in the movie - and I wanted even more screen time from her. As much as I love Dianna Agron, her character was totally bland, while Six totally kicked butt. In fact, there was way more chemistry between Six and John than Sarah and John and I found myself wanting them to be together instead.
• Sam's father was investigating alien activity before he disappeared, and Henri brought John to Paradise because he wanted to find out what he'd been up to (John doesn't know this, of course). Henri is a lot more forceful with getting John to agree to leave, too. It just made a lot more sense.
• The Mogadorians (or Mogs, as they get called for most of the movie, heh) pursue John and co. immediately after running into them at the They Walk Among Us peeps' house. Again, it just made a lot more sense - I found the space between this incident and the final battle months later a bit ridiculous in the book. 
• Speaking of They Walk Among Us, it was a website, not a magazine. Way more realistic in this day and age. Sense!
• Mark was heaps nicer to John when he first meets him, and only bullies him after John himself is a bit of an arse to him. Granted, he has his reasons, but Mark being kinda nice to start with worked better with his niceness at the end - as opposed to the book where he does a complete 180.
• John and Six's powers were different. While it probably wasn't totally necessary, it did allow for the awesome shot of Six protecting John from the fire (when in the book, he could do this himself), and avoided the weirdness of thunderstorm demons.
• Bernie Kosar immediately transforms when the battle starts (it's actually a pretty funny moment). In the book, it felt like the fight had been going on forever before he finally showed up to save the day.
• It seemed like less Mogs showed up to fight in the final battle, so it was easier to understand why the kids were able to beat them. The battle itself didn't drag out nearly as much and was a lot more action-packed (as a battle should be).
• Sam had a jerk of a step-father he was desperate to escape from, so when he left with Six and John in the end he wasn't just ditching his poor mother like he does in the book.
• Henri's death earlier in the film allowed for a more triumphant mood at the end. 

Changes that didn't

• John appears pretty popular at his last school and is more standoffish when he gets to Paradise. It diminishes the reasoning behind his attachment to the town and to Sarah and Sam, and why he's so desperate to stay.
• Sarah isn't as overtly nice in the beginning. I didn't really warm to her at all. Like I said, as beautiful as Dianna Agron is, her character was pretty bland.
• They never really explain that there's a charm that means the aliens can't be killed except in sequential order. Which is kind of a big deal.
• Henri was nowhere near as important a character as he is in the book. While the way he died in the movie worked, it also wasn't quite as sad as in the book and didn't seem to effect John as much.
• Compressing the timeline improved the pace, but it also made the trip to school to develop photos (in between Sarah's rescue and the final battle) really, really dumb. Why, oh why, when you're on the run from evil aliens trying to assassinate you, would you make a pit stop to develop photos?! Seriously.

I'm sure there's plenty more that I missed, but that's what's stuck in my mind. It'll be interesting to see if they end up making the sequel that both the book and movie endings so clearly set up for, coz apparently (and understandably) it's been a major box office disappointment.

Rating: 3/5

Eye candy

As I mentioned in my review of the book, I already had Alex Pettyfer, Dianna Agron and Teresa Palmer in my head when I read it. Dianna matched the description of her character perfectly, and although Teresa didn't, I thought she was great anyway. John never really describes himself in the book and Alex, of course, is super pretty, but he just doesn't do it for me. Maybe it's because I remember watching him as a little kid in Tom Brown's Schooldays not so long ago, and it makes me feel super-old:

I was surprised at how young and pretty Henri was (played by Timothy Olyphant), but other than his scarily white teeth, I couldn't really complain:

 

Sam (Callan McAuliffe) looked a lot different than how I pictured him (obviously), but that didn't bother me (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!):

 

 And look at this pretty one:
 

Review: I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (a.k.a. James Frey and Jobie Hughes)

My feelings for this book can be summed up in one word: meh. 

Actually, that's not even a word, is it? Just a sound. Yep, that's about as much as I care about I Am Number Four. I didn't hate it. But I didn't like it either. I just felt... meh.

I read this because I was kinda excited about the movie, and I have this weird obsession with reading the book versions of movie adaptations beforehand (as you can probably tell by my last two reviews). I'd been told the movie was, "like Twilight, with aliens", which sounded pretty much perfect for me. Plus, it stars Alex Pettyfer and Dianna Agron, who are both very pretty and made an incredibly cute couple (despite being an alleged PR pairing with a literally fiery breakup).

But back to the book. Our narrotor is John Smith, a.k.a Number Four, one of nine young aliens sent to Earth after their home planet, Lorien, was destroyed by the evil Mogadorians. He's spent his life on the run from these creatures along with his carer, Henri, but all he wants to do is settle down. Henri finally relents and agrees to stay for awhile in a small town called Paradise (really), despite the fact that John is next on the Mogadorians' sequential hit list. So John is at last able to make a friend and, of course, a girlfriend (yay!) - but how long can he escape the detection of the Mogadorians? (Spoilery answer: not very).

It was a struggle to get through this. For a story with a fair amount of action (both of the romantic and more violent kind), I found it incredibly boring. I think part of the problem was that it was written in the present tense - a device which, when used effectively, can really emphasise the urgency of a situation. But, when not, only works to highlight how extremely dull it is - which is exactly what most of the book felt like. Even the fight scenes had my eyes glazing over. There were certain details that seemed to come out of nowhere (for instance, Sarah returning from a trip I didn't remember her leaving for), but I can't say with certainty whether that was a flaw in the continuity or if I just zoned out in too many places. And the sad part is I didn't care enough to go back and reread to make sure. Like I said: meh.

Rating: 2.5/5

Talking Points

• How lame is the name Mogadorians for a race of evil aliens? Also, their description (or lack thereof) made it really hard for me to picture what they looked like. I was confused for awhile and thought they were some kind of beasts, then I realised that the beasts were their pets. Or something.
• I liked the relationship between Sarah and John, and the fact that it wasn't all angsty and complicated. It was a pretty realistic portrayal of a teen romance (aside from, y'know, the whole alien part), and I appreciated that Sarah had her own thing going on and wasn't swooning every time John breathed. She even told him to shut up when he was being super cheesy (flirtily, it's true, but still it's something). While this was nice and refreshing, their normalcy and lack of hurdles for most of the story (even his alienness doesn't really affect their relationship) means that there was none of the intensity that really makes you root for a couple.
• My favourite character was Bernie Kosar. A dog. That says a lot about the other characters. But it really irritated me that (spoiler alert) John didn't make the connection that Bernie was an alien, too, until he literally transforms in front of his eyes. I felt it was just so obvious. But then, John doesn't seem like the brightest spark - it also took him 340-odd pages to realise he'd been able to hear the thoughts of animals all along.
• Even though I didn't particularly enjoy this book, I'll probably still read the inevitable sequels. Because it hints that a lot of back story gets explained in the next one, which I'm curious about. Then again, maybe I'll just read the Wikipedia synopsis.

Eye candy

In a completely unintentional pattern, I yet again saw the movie trailer before reading the book. So the cast was cemented in my head. Luckily, as I mentioned, they're very pretty:

There was a problem when Six's dark-haired description didn't QUITE match up to a very blonde Teresa Palmer, but I just ignored it:

Then there was Sam. I wasn't sure who plays him, but there's only one person who comes to mind when a sandy-haired nerd is mentioned: