I absolutely loved this book and couldn’t wait to see the movie. The premise behind the story is that after a devastating War much of society was destroyed. The story takes place about 100 years from now in what is left of Chicago. In order to save society, the population was divided into five factions based on character traits that were dominant. Amity(peaceful) farm the land, Candor (honesty) run the legal system, Erudite (intelligent) focus on technology, Abnegation(selflessness) run the government and Dauntless (Bravery) protect the city from the outside world. We don’t really know what is out there at this point but we are told we need to be protected from it.
Tris (or Beatrice as she was known from Abnegation) is the teenage main character and after undergoing the mandatory testing to see which faction she is suited to, discovers that she is Divergent. She fits into more than one category. Divergence is a dangerous thing she is told, and she must hide it from everyone.
Tris chooses Dauntless and then has to leave her family behind and learn to fight, shoot, and train for all kinds of different situations including a mental component that helps her combat fear.
I don’t want to get into too much detail, but suffice it to say that Tris is one butt whipping, super cool heroine. Shailene Woodley does an excellent job of portraying Tris.
And of course who could forget the love interest of Four. Theo James plays Tobias (four) and OMG this guys is AWESOME! My only complaint with the movie is that they swiftly passed over the attraction and intensity of the connection between Tris and Four. You get the gist, but you miss the emotion of the book. Sigh…but he is easy on the eyes for sure.
Well I will leave it at this. The movie was great, full of action, suspense, drama, intrigue and everything you want in a movie. Was it as good as the book? Not a chance, but they rarely are. If you didn’t read the book it was an awesome movie. If you read the book, it was a good movie that left a lot of the book out. But that is to be expected when you try to pack a fantastic novel into a two-hour movie that needs to focus on the action and special effects to draw in a crowd.
I wasn’t disappointed and look forward to the next installment.
5 stars for me.
Cynthia Stacey 