A Divergence Of Opinion

Word of warning, this is going to potentially be a really long, really meandering post, so be prepared.  I try very hard not to pre-judge a book, or let other reviews or opinions influence me to much before I read and ramble about a book.  It is impossible to be completely unbiased as one usually picks up a book for a reason, the cover, the blurb, the hype, authorship, genre all of these obviously lead to some sort of assumption about the book, but over all I try very hard to read each book with an open mind.  Divergent (book #1 in the Divergent Series) by Veronica Roth is one of those books I have had a hard time reading with an open mind.  On one hand many trusted sources loved this book and recommended it, and they are usually dead on, on the other hand the whole premise of the series just does not work for me on a gut level.  So I figured that if I was to follow my own rules, that if I was going to comment on it, I should probably actually read it first.  I went in hoping it would surprise me, that the premise would have a plausible explanation and that I would not want to toss the main character off a cliff.  I was both pleasantly surprised and understandably disappointed in this book. Why you ask, well lets start with a quick synopsis then you can all listen to me ramble for a couple of paragraphs :-) As always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

Sometime in the future the world, or at least the people of Chicago Illinois USA (Happy Birthday Chi-town) have survived some sort of something and have divided into five factions.  The factions are divided on how people think to best avoid another war.  The Amity faction uphold peace at any cost, they are the hippies of the world.  The Candor group believes that complete and utter truth will avoid war.  The Erudite's feel knowledge is the answer to the worlds problems.  The Abnegation Faction is sure that if everybody were selfless war would be extinct.  Finally the Dauntless believe that courage is key to keeping the people safe.  Children live and learn the precepts of their faction until they turn 16, they then undergo a test, kind of an aptitude test that shows what faction a person is most likely to end up in, though that does not mean the person has to choose that faction.  For the most part children tend to stick with the faction they were born into, but there are always exceptions.  Beatrice is one of those exceptions.  She was born into Abnegation a daughter of a ruling council member (in this world only people from Abnegation are allowed to rule as they are seen as being above corruption and always working for other people).  As much as she loves her family, she struggles with being eternally selfless.  She takes her test and is told in hushed tones that she is Divergent, as far as I can tell that means she fits into more then one faction profile, in her case Dauntless, Erudite and Abnegation.  This is potentially bad juju for our heroine and she is told to never tell anyone.  Beatrice

chooses Dauntless as her faction and her brother chooses Erudite, leaving their parents with no children remaining in Abnegation.  Beatrice, or Tris as she now calls herself is put with the other transfers and made to go through a series of bloody, violent, fear inducing tests.  The recruits are told that of the 20 recruits only 10 will be allowed to remain in Dauntless and the rest will have to live factionless. We also meet Four, one of the training instructors, and Eric a sadistic young man who is part of the leadership.  Tris initially does not do so well, but she quickly learns.  Meanwhile the Erudite's have been spreading lies and rumors about the Abnegation leadership, attempting to start a revolution to take power from them. Tris's mother comes to Visiting Day and reveals that she was originally from Dauntless before she chose Abnegation, which completely takes Tris by surprise (GO MAMMA).  Stuff happens, violence ensues and they move on to the second stage of training. This stage is where you start to face your fears and Tris quickly learns to manipulate the simulations, tipping Four off that she is Divergent.  Tris and Four strike up a relationship that is actually kind of sweet and does not involve Four manhandling Tris into compliance with his manly whims.  More stuff and things, more rumors and mayhem, more skulking and secrets and then the final test.  The final test is to go through your fear landscape and find a way to face your fears.  The average number of fears is between 10-15.  Tris finds out that the reason Four is called Four is that he only has Four fears, heights, confined spaces, killing his mom, and his abusive father...who just happens to be the leader of Abnegation.  Tris gets through her test with only 6 fears (she is so special) and is then injected by Eric with a tracker

serum that he says is being given to everybody.  Tris and Four come to an understanding about life and go to the celebration banquet where she finds out she is #1 on the rankings and all her friends made into Dauntless YAY!  She goes to bed and wakes up when her bunkmates all start sleepwalking for lack of a better term.  They all board the train to the Abnegation sector with Tris playing along at being controlled for the sake of trying to save her family.  Four also turns out to be a hidden Divergent and can also resist the commands of the serum.  He and Tris try and save people, but end up captured.  Turns out that the Erudite leader Jeanine and the Dauntless leadership have decided to team up and murder the Abnegation council to take over.  Knowing that most soldiers would never murder innocents in cold blood, the Erudite's created a serum to control them and anybody else they deemed to non docile.  Tris escapes with the help of her mother who also turns out to be Divergent and was sent to Abnegation for her own safety.  Her mother dies protecting her, fulfilling the ultimate selfless act.  Tris finds her father, brother and Marcus (Fours abusive father) and devises a plan to destroy the transmission that is controlling the soldiers.  Along the way her father is also killed protecting her, again displaying the selflessness of his faction.  Tris is able to break Fours conditioning and they stop the transmission.  All is chaos as they head toward the Amity sector for refuge and to decide what to do next.  The End.

As always there is more to the book then what I synopsed (is that a word?) but that is the gist of it.  Now on to my self important rambling about why this book drove me CRAZY!  It was actually a well written book, especially if you compare it to books like The Maze Runner series.  This book had good well fleshed out characters, believable conflict, even the requisite love story had a decent flavor.  My big problem with this book is the basic premise.  The idea that humanity can be divided into one of five emotional/mental states is very interesting, but completely unrealistic.  I can see them trying it as an experiment, but I would guess that it would not hold any sort of pure form for very long.  Humans are made to think in various ways, even the most sheep like of people when pressed will find that nothing is as simple as a single concept.  I have a whole entire list of notes I made while reading this book and they kept coming back to the fact that this society cannot exist, humans would never be able to maintain that kind of discipline, nor would they want to. So 'cause this is my blog I am going to discuss some of the things I think would make this society impossible.  First off if you are forced to choose a single precept to live your life by, I'm pretty sure 16 is the wrong age to do it.  I know as a 16 year old if I was given the choice I would be torn between Erudite and

Dauntless...as would the vast majority of the other 16 year olds I knew.  Who wouldn't want to be the bad ass group, or the group who got to do things.  I cannot think of very many 16 year olds who would purposely choose a life of self sacrifice, especially when you go to school with the other factions and see how much more fun they are.   And then what happens when you grow up, I can tell you right now what I thought was awesome and perfect and wonderful, is not how I think now x+ years later and I am pretty sure in another 15 years my views will have modified again.  So you make a choice based on your impulsive, hormonal, young 16 year old self and have no other options until you die...not gonna happen.  Ok so moving on.  Apparently the main indicator that you are the dreaded Divergent is that you score high in more then one faction during your aptitude test...which the test itself is kind of dumb.  Not only that, but it doesn't matter what the test says you can choose a different faction regardless...so is anybody who chooses a different faction from their test results Divergent?  Also don't most of these factions actually have to spill over into each other, as one character says, it takes a lot of courage to be selfless...so again...wouldn't most humans be Divergent.  This takes me to another issue, their seems to be contradicting information about the rules of factions and Divergent's.  Sometimes the initiates are encouraged to think like other factions, they are told to do some research and be prepared, or to be honest or whatever as a way to enhance and improve.  Other times when a recruit does any of those things they are derided for acting like another faction.  And what about the transfer initiates...are they not automatically Divergent as they spent the last 16 years being trained in another ideal...you don't just lose that training.  Moving on to what the purpose of the factions is.  Apparently in this society if you are in a faction, there are a limited number of jobs you can do.  Abnegation is the ruling council and head of all the volunteer work to restore the city (from what I don't know) and make sure that the

factionless have jobs, food, clothes and shelter (more on the factionless in a minute).  Dauntless can pretty much only do security...and piercing and tattoos of other Dauntless.  Amity farms and gardens.  Erudite does pretty much everything else that is non menial. Candor...well...I'm not sure what Candor actually does other then annoy each other.  All the menial jobs like bus driving and janitorial jobs are forced upon the factionless who are treated like dirt. I hate that the only option to being in one of the five super specific factions is to live in abject poverty as a third class citizen, there is no recourse, no possibility of re factioning, and the worst part is that there are no rules on how or when a person can get kicked out.  Of the 20 initiates in Dauntless they are told at least 10 will be factionless by the end of the trials...16 year olds who had no idea how the trials work and they are screwed for the rest of their lives, not cool.  Again, I do not know of any group of humans who would allow this weirdly skewed society to exist (also if Abnegation were truly selfless, wouldn't the let all the factionless into their faction?).  The reasoning behind Divergent's being a threat finally comes out in the end...but this is a recent development and I am not sure if being Divergent was just recently recognized, or it did not matter before, or what, but again more convenient then sense making.  I could go on and on and on and on and on about how this type of society is impossible with out giving people drugs or shock therapy or a lobotomy, but I think you get my frustration.  It was hard because I would get into the story (and again it was fairly well written) and then they would dump the Divergent premise in their and all I could think about is NO THAT

WOULD NOT HAPPEN.  I am weird though and seem to be in the minority (shocking right ;-) ) Again, it sounds like I hate the book, but I did not, I really enjoyed the characters and their motivation, I loved loved loved the time they spent in the Dauntless challenges, and I even liked the relationship between Tris and Four (yay for no stupid love triangle). Also as a girl who did the Chicago scene for several years (and got myself the worlds best Hubbin while there) I loved how recognizable, yet destroyed the city was.  I will happily read the next two books (though I have been warned about book two) and hope that the author can find a way to convince me that put together the whole series makes sense.  I understood the comparison to the Hunger Games series and not just because it is a YA dystopian trilogy.  There are violent contests, friends, bucking the government and a girl lead who is finding her inner strength, but this is not by any means a copy cat of Hunger Games, it has its own story, its own setting, and its own premise.  I now cannot wait to see the movie and see how it stacks up to the books, and I will get to the next book in the series soon.  I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoyed the Hunger Games...just beware the premise.  I give this book 6 out of 10 lip piercings.

Do I let the premise of books take up to much importance?  What is the most important aspect of a book to you?  What faction would you choose?  What faction would you create? Why is every YA dystopia compared to the Hunger Games?  

A Dance With Dragons And Dwarves And Daggers

Yay, boo, yay, boo, that is my feeling on finishing A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, book #5 in A Song of Ice and Fire series.  Yay 'cause I finally got to catch up and know what everybody else knows, boo 'cause now I have to wait for a zillion years with everybody else for the next book to come out.  At over 1500 pages this was another long read, but went by much quicker then A Feast for Crows, but still not as awesome as the first three books.  I will try and sum up per character as best I can then ramble for a while, you ready?  Great, then as always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Since the book jumps all over the place I will sum it up per main character and try and fill in the rest the best I can.

Jon Snow/At the Wall-Our buddy Jon is continuing to try and hold the Night Watch together under horrible conditions.  Stannis Baratheon has brought his red priestess Melisandre (the amount of people being burned death has increased 1000x in this book because of her) and his army to help fight the wildlings and then decided to stay.  Jon struggles with maintaining his neutrality as the Commander of the Night Watch. Stannis takes most of his army and leaves to try and reclaim Winterfell from Roose Bolton and his bastard son Ramsey.  To this end Jon makes a deal with the wildlings and allows them to all come in from the North above the wall and make a home in the area's surrounding the Wall.  This horrifies the Stannis's Queen Selyse who is stuck at the Wall as well.  Melisandre continues to try and win Jon to her side, telling him the things she see's in the flames.  A note comes for Jon from Ramsey telling him that he has crushed Stannis and his army and has wed Arya Stark.  Jon decides to break his oath and ride to rescue Arya.  This does not sit well with the already disgruntled Night Watch and the book ends with Jon being stabbed multiple times.

Theon/Winterfell-Theon, who has been reduced to a fragile, broken, tortured soul is called Reek by Ramsey Bolton, the bastard son of Roose Bolton who has claimed Winterfell for himself.  Theon is cleaned up and use to help marry Ramsey to Arya Stark to try and legitimatize his claim to Winterfell.  Of course the girl Ramsey is marrying is not Arya, but Sansa's little friend Jayne.  Both Jayne and Theon are afraid of what would happen if anybody found out she is not Arya so they play along.  Much chaos ensues and Theon is enlisted to help spirit "Arya" away.  Theon is successful at the cost of the rest of his companions and Roose and Ramsey slaughter Stannis and his army who have been severely weakened by the oncoming winter.

Bran-Bran has traveled with Meera and Jojen in the company of a strange man, who appears to be one of the undead.  Bran has learned to inhabit the mind of most living things, using his new skill to ride with the slow witted Hodor or his direwolf Summer.  The three children end up under the mountains in the company of the Children of the Forest, long thought to be extinct.  They inform Bran that he is able to become a seer like entity, becoming one with the earth, animals and the weir trees.  Bran then learns to "ride" the weir trees and is able to see through various points in time.

Daenerys/Slaver's Bay-Our girl Dany has made a name for herself by freeing the slaves of Meereen (remember that about a thousand books ago?).  She is now the Queen of Meereen and is trying her hardest to keep the peace and settle the city before she takes of to conquer the Seven Kingdoms.  This is proving difficult as pretty much nobody wants her there.  She is beset upon by all the surrounding cities who just want slavery reestablished, and from within the city itself.  This is compounded by the fact that her dragons have graduated from eating sheep, to eating children and a bloody flux that is killing everybody regardless of what side they are on. Dany is forced to cage her white and green dragons to prevent further killings, but her biggest dragon the black Drogo escapes.  To try and keep the peace, and make things safe for her freed slaves, Dany agrees to marry Hizdahr zo Loraq a noble of Meereen as a concession to the nobles there.  As a wedding gift Dany reopens the fighting pits.  Hizdahr zo Loraq brings along a feast for Dany and her retinue, resulting in the poisoning of Strong Belwas one of her body guards 

when he ate all the honey locust meant for Dany.  During the fighting Drogo flies in and kills a whole bunch of people.  Dany then hops aboard and flies off, leaving the city of Meereen in chaos.

Tyrion-Oh my how I have missed my witty little man, he is by far my favorite character in this series and to go a whole long book without him sucked.  He is back with a vengeance, on the run after killing his father he makes his way to the Pentos where he is assisted by Illyrio, the same man who helped Daenerys and Viserion.  Tyrion is let in on a plan to bring Daenerys back to Westeros and assume the Iron Throne.  At this point Tyrion is on board with any plan that disposes his sister the Queen Regent Cersei.  He ends up on a boat with a group that turns out to include a young Aegon, who was just an infant when Robert Baratheon led his uprising and was supposedly killed by Tywin Lannister.  Turns out they were able to switch him out with a low born infant and was smuggled of by a knight loyal to the Prince Rhaegar until his death.  Tyrion is all ready to help Aegon until he is kidnapped by Jorah Mormont to take back as a gift to Queen Dany to prove his loyalty.  Along the way they hook up with Penny, a simple dwarf girl who performed with her brother at the then still alive King Joffery's wedding.  Her brother had been beheaded as a result of Tyrion's escape leaving Penny alone with her dog and pig.  The motley crew are then captured by slavers, the result being Tyrion (known as Yollo) being forced to do a comic act with Penny, jousting from the back of the pig and dog (I cannot wait to see this on the TV show).  Eventually our friend talks his way to not only his freedom, but the freedom of Penny and Jorah as well.  Meanwhile Aegon, his loyal night and a couple of companies of sell swords have landed in the Seven Kingdoms to begin their conquest.

 Cersei/Kings Landing-Queen Cersei is still imprisoned by the High Septon on charges of fornication and treason.  The Queen finally realizes the only way to see her son again is to confess at least to the lesser charges of fornication.  She does and her punishment is to walk shorn and naked from the sept, through the city to the castle.  She does this, humiliated and broken, but able to be with her son again.  She has been humbled, but her spark is still there.  As for the charges of treason, she is able to request a trial by combat, with a giant, unknown man as her champion.  She is allowed to dwell in the castle with her son until the trial is complete. Margery Tyrell has thrown herself on the mercy of the church and will have a trial by faith.  Cersei's Uncle Kevan is now essentially running the show, trying to maintain peace and balance as well as he can.  The book ends with him being stabbed by Vary's as he is told that all the secret council wants to do is maintain peace, and Aegon and Dany are the best hope they have of that.

We also get quick glimpses of Jamie, Arya, Davos, Brienne, the Martells in Dorne, Asha, Victorion and about a zillion other quick characters.  Some live, some die, some are left up in the air.

Okay that was a long synopsis and that did not even cover hardly any of the book, but again the book was 1500+ pages so we will leave it at that.  I have mixed feelings about this latest installment.  On one hand compared to the snoozefest of the A Feast for Crows this one actually had some action to it, on the other hand compared to the first three books  it is still overly blah.  I think these last two books suffer from too much detail.  The author describes in detail EVERY SINGLE THING.  If a lord walks into a room with his nine courtiers, all 9 of them get described in as much detail as the main guy...and then we never hear about any of them again.  I am all for adding bits of detail to round out a world, but after 5 books all clocking in at the 1000+ page range, I don't need to know what everybody was wearing.  The author also does a lot of redescribing, I got the first three times he told us that Jayne has brown eyes not grey like Arya, but every

single time she is mentioned, so are her eyes, it is just overkill. This especially happens with places, I know what the Wall looks like, I have known what the Wall looks like since it was so well described in book one, unless something changes  don't need to spend 3 pages at the beginning of each chapter the Wall is in being described to me.  I know this sounds petty, but I am pretty sure we could loose at least 300 pages if this was edited out a bit.  I don't know if I am just getting jaded, or I am nit-picking, or what, but these books are starting to get repetitive. A king/queen arises, they join the fight, sometimes they stick around, sometimes they get killed, minor lords are either super loyal or super evil and stuff happens accordingly, lather, rinse, repeat.  I guess I am just read for this epic story to go somewhere.  Now on to the things I really enjoyed.  Tyrion, every word of his story makes me smile.  His perspective is so different from most of the others, his attitude and the way he deals with things is refreshing.  Making him a slave for a little while and getting him out of Kings Landing just made me happy.  I still love Arya's story now that it has taken her to Braavos and am glad that she got a couple of chapters.  Reminding us that the overthrowing of the Targaryens is super recent and that a good chunk of the population was not only alive when it happened, but actively participated in it is so different and awesome when compared to most stories where it is if not ancient history, at least a couple of generations have passed. My favorite reveal in this book is the existence of Aegon, with Dany I thought we had our Targaryen faction, but this adding a legitimate contender for the blood line that can either be a rival or an ally for Dany is kind of exciting.  I am excited to see where we go from here as far as the story goes, this book did a lot to sweep away a lot of the little petty factions, and set the tone for a Targaryen comeback, if that actually happens we will have to see.  I hope these last two books concentrate on wrapping the story up, not everything has to be resolved, I just want it to quit dragging.  Hopefully the next book will be out before I forget what I have read in these five books.  I give this book 6 out of 10 Pretty Pigs.

Who is your favorite character in this series?  What do want to see happen?  Do you ever edit books in your head as you read them? Are you like me and very glad to have the e-format for giant books like this?

Mass Chaos

Hi All, so incredibly sorry about the spotty posting, I am a horrible horrible person and will punish myself by reading Twilight again ;-)  Anyways I had a great post all set and ready to go and then KABLAM chaos.

I will hopefully have a nice long rambling for you tomorrow morning...but who knows what those little book pixies have in mind.  Hope you are all snuggled somewhere warm with a tad less chaos then at my house.  Happy Reading Everybody!