Tuesday, March 3, 2015

my Divergent rant

Okay, so I am rethinking my approach on books at the moment. My previous post shared some series I was interested in, but I think I am going to have to swerve in another direction. I beginning to think that I really need to stray from YA novels and read more true to adult novels. I went ahead and (sadly) canceled my order for the Shatter Me series. I am having some of the same issues in Divergent as I had in The Two Princesses of Bamarre. Divergent is really not wowing me like I was hoping it would. At first I was thinking it was due to the fact that I saw the movie already and just knew the story, but there are things within that are just kind of....irritating me? First off, I am super glad that some of the ridiculous things in the movie that didn't make sense (such as Abnegation ruling over everyone because they are the only faction that is a public service, when in fact, they all do things for the community), were not written specifically like that in the book. But there are things that I preferred in the movie over the book as well. For example, the technology. I am reading through this book slightly confused of where this civilization stands in terms of advancement. I mean, they have developed this really awesome serum that one can drink or inject that creates fear within your brain, triggering your mind to experience all of these different kinds of scenarios to test your reactions to fear, while also giving another person the ability to watch these images and scenarios, or to even have them plastered on a screen like a TV show. But, when the Dauntless have their war games, or capture the flag, they use paintball guns? Did paintball guns and tattoo needles and supplies survive the war enough to be usable, or were they re-invented? This seems incredibly silly to me, and I guess I am just a more serious reader? I don't know. On top of that, I have a huge issue with how the author wrote about the Abnegation faction. This is the first year so many teens have left Abnegation, it was apparently rare. Which goes against everything we have learned in science about our human nature. There are actually stages that our brain travels through to get to a point where we can be selfless and truly think of others over ourselves, but all of those teens never felt that human desire to explore who they are? I personally think every one needs to first understand who they are and what makes them tick, before they can suppress and become truly selfless. None of these teens, for years, have been human? They set it up to make it look like Tris is someone incredibly rare and special, yet more teens, logically, should have been craving to understand who they are in this world. And why are they expecting 16 year olds to be able to make a lifelong decision? Haven't they at least gleamed from the previous civilization that most 18 year olds couldn't do that when they approached college? The reason they even have these different factions is in response to the previous civilization, but they chose to make the age younger when it comes to deciding what you want to be for the rest of your life? It is kind of nonsensical. Another small rant, the wording, and sometimes the editing. There are times when there needs to be an obvious space between two different scenes in the same chapter, but there is nothing. It takes me several minutes to figure out what they heck is going on. There is also several chapters where the word "hem" is overused to my liking. Which is kind of random, and weird. I could probably overlook most of these issues that crawl under my skin, my pet peeves of book reading, except for the fact that the entire book revolves too much around the Dauntless training, which is very vulgar and violent, and too little about Four and Tris. The movie was kind of deceiving in that part, it appeared that Four and Tris were an important part in all of this, their growing relationship, but I am almost on page 300, and it barely exists, like a snail crawling to nowhere. I love people interacting, and bravery, and all of that good stuff. But this novel focuses too much on so much negativity, it isn't panning out for me. One thing I do love though, is reading about Tris coming into her own. I like reading about how she grew up forced to completely ignore anything personal about herself, and now she has the freedom to explore it. Even though it shouldn't be a rare thing, it is nice to see that aspect in a character.
I will read the next book when I finish this one, and hope that not knowing the story will allow me to read through it more enjoyably and not focus so much on the little details that don't add up, but after this series I need to do some more researching. I am having trouble discovering things to read, as most searches I do online tend to pool the YA and adult genres together, so it is becoming slightly confusing, and I don't really have a good book store to explore these things. Any tips on figuring out how to separate these genres in book searching on Barnes and Nobles or Amazon? Or anywhere else?

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