Divergent Movie Review

Last Friday, the film adaptation of the novel Divergent by Veronica Roth was released in cinemas in the states. It was directed by Neil Burger, who is also known for The Illusionist and Limitless.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the average critic rating is at 40% who thought it was good. I’m actually rather surprised at how low that rating is, though I can’t say that I generally trust the website for if films are good or not.

In my opinion, coming from the perspective of the book, this movie is one of the best adaptations of a book to date. Granted, I haven’t read the book in over a year, but it was pretty damn good. It follows the plot shockingly close (we all remember the Percy Jackson flop), which I haven’t seen since Harry Potter.

I’m not going to lie, there were some changes from the book. It wasn’t a carbon copy. The main difference from what I could tell was that Uriah, Marlene, and Zeke were all cut out from the film. I know that the fandom was in an uproar when this was found out, and I’m not exactly trying to defend the movie here, but speaking from personal experience I found it was difficult to keep track of the characters in the book. It would be just as difficult if not even more so to keep them straight in a movie. So in that sense, I understand the change. There is also the fact that the ending was tweaked slightly to include the fight scene and some of Tris’s fear landscapes were absent. Also, small detail, but the Erudite weren’t wearing glasses. I honestly don’t know why I remember that.

The biggest problem I had with this movie was the use of green screens. They were used multiple times in the movie and those scenes felt a little too 2005ish for my tastes (and does anyone else remember Alex Rider?).

There was a lot of hype about the lead actors – and by hype, I mean hate. Shailene Woodley and Theo James, playing Tris Prior and Four respectively, had a lot of the fandom up in an angry uproar. Shailene didn’t look “Tris” enough for the part. Theo wasn’t hot. And granted, from the stills, that seemed to be the case. But when I actually saw them in action, I was in for a shock. Their acting was perfectly spot on for the characters. Tris was timid with that adventurousness and curiosity about her. Four started off cruel and cold, only to warm up to Tris. It really was a good job on their part, and on the part of the casting crew (Venus Kanani and Mary Vernieu).

Coming from my friend, who hadn’t read the books, the movie held good entertainment value. I obviously couldn’t weigh in on this because I was so focused on similar it was to the novel. In her view, though, the film was on the long side and dragged on in places. The two hours passed without me noticing, though without already knowing the plot beforehand, I would have probably gotten a bit bored.

Overall, I would give this movie a 5 out of 5. Granted, there were imperfections, but there literally isn’t a single movie without them. I have not had this much pride in a film adaptation ever in my life. From the casting to the accuracy to the book, it was obvious that the screenplay writers and the director had actually read the book (something that is very questionable in other movies). So kudos to this movie for being one of the best of its kind (dare I say it was even better at accuracy and entertainment than Catching Fire).

After the Fear Review

I had After the Fear waiting, unread, on my tablet for the past few months. Only recently, when I was going through my emails did I remember it and decided why not read it? I haven’t anything better to do. And let me tell you – that was one of the best decisions of my life.

After the Fear by Rosanne River’s takes place in a dystopian society in which England has to pay of the “debt”, which they do by holding these events called demonstrations. If someone breaks the law, they get thrown into a demonstration. This book follows the perspective of a younger heroin named Sola. It sounds quite like the Hunger Games when you talk about it, but trust me. It’s better.

First of all, there is a well-written, strong female protagonist in this novel. I’ve found it difficult to find books that realistically portray a female lead, and River’s got it perfect in one. Sola faces not just issues that exist only in this fictional world, but also ones that regular teenage girls face, such as drama. But that drama doesn’t take over the book and there’s still plenty of action to go around.

I see the comparison to the Hunger Games, but the two books are not the same. There is fighting in an arena, but in After the Fear it’s more Roman gladiator style verses attempting to live in a strange yet controlled environment. The plots are also entirely different. This book is much less of a story leading up to a rebellion and war and more about the main character dealing with things as they’re thrown at her. She does find out about what the government is doing, but for once, there’s a main character who actually thinks better about striking back at full force.

The setting in this novel is fairly creative. It took England and twisted it around. Cities stayed cities, but the names were changed and the style of cities did too. No one could leave or enter them and, while some of that is standard practice in dystopian novels, the way River’s went about it and the setting she used as the base was fairly interesting.

There is also a political base to this novel as well. It talks about debt and, similar in this sense to Anthony Horowitz’s Oblivion, takes an issue from today and escalates it to how it might be in the long run if nothing is done. It was a creative approach and the plot twist in the novel really ties it in to modern day.

Overall, I give After the Fear a five out of five. I can’t find much fault with the book and I can see myself coming back to this book multiple times to reread. It easily made my top five favourites of all time, and it’s fairly difficult for a book to place there. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a bit of action that also satisfies their dystopian society needs. I would also recommend it to any Hunger Games fan. The romance in this novel is fairly minimal as well, so while there is some, it is not sickeningly so. The only warning I have about this novel is that there is a lot of killing, and that could possibly make someone uncomfortable or be a bit of a trigger warning. But overall, this book is brilliant and I highly recommend it.

Allegiant Review

In the weeks leading up to the publication of Allegiant, the final book in the Divergent series, there was a huge amount of hype. It was trending on Twitter and consumed Tumblr in the days before the publication. When the book was finally released, it was devoured by fans.

Photo source Here

Only for people to find out the book was absolute rubbish.

I have read a lot of terribly written books in my lifetime, and Allegiant is one of them. The first book, Divergent, was fairly good. I enjoyed it enough to continue on to the second book. Insurgent was a bit of a chore to read, but I still did manage to finish it. Allegiant made me lose all faith in the series.

What was with the writing style, first off? Some authors have managed to pull off the idea of switching perspectives between characters, but Veronica Roth has not. While reading the book, it was extremely easy to become confused as to whether you were reading from Tris or Tobias’ view. Their internal voices were very similar – so similar, in fact, that when Tobias was kissing a girl I had thought it was from Tris’ perspective only for Tris to walk into the scene. It was very poorly written. On top of that, the writing itself was very basic. First person present tense is not my favourite, and this book is the reason why. The sentence structure was very simplistic and the diction was incredible basic. The plot may have been creative, but the poor writing drowned all of that out and made it very difficult and almost dry to read. There was no emotion in the writing either.

Characterisation, or rather, lack thereof, was extremely prominent. Tris lost any and all of the personality she’s gained in the previous book and ended up as a blank slate of emotionlessness. If she did have emotion at any point in time, it didn’t affect the reader I the slightest, leaving them indifferent. Same goes for Tobias. He discovers something shocking about himself, and while I expected him to have a more dramatic reaction, he only grew slightly more angsty and followed along with what another character was doing.

The plot itself was unrelated, to put it nicely. This book contradicted and made everything that happened in the previous books irrelevant. The idea behind that isn’t terrible, but it was so poorly executed that any positive that would have come from it was counteracted by the fact that the book just wasn’t written well. Even if there’s a good idea behind a book, if the writing and the characters are poorly done, there is no way the plot could excel. You can’t have one thing without the other.

Death should normally hold some meaning and usually, if it’s a major character, shock and upset the reader. This isn’t always true, but there’s a difference between offering foreshadowing for a symbolic death and just killing off character because there was literally nothing else to add in. Not saying which characters die, but the deaths are pointless in this book. It serves to add nothing to the plot – not even closure at the least. Its only purpose was to shock the reader in the ending and leave the fans of the series completely disappointed.

I give this book a one out of five. It offers a conclusion to the series, yes, but it’s a rubbish one and you would be better off reading fanfiction instead. The ending of the book is not a good ending (again, trying to stay spoiler free here), and while the other books felt like they were leading up to something, this one wasn’t. Overall, the book was just poorly planned out and poorly written. No one should read this book. It really is not worth your precious time.

Legend Review

The fandom for Marie Lu’s Legend is ever growing, especially with the (not so recent anymore) release of the third book. I decided to give it a try and, finally, I reached the part of my personal stack of books where that book was waiting to be read.

            Legend takes place on the west coast of the states in a future (dare I say a dystopian one) where the country is split into two – the Republic and the Colonies – and they are at war with each other. The story is told from two perspectives: June, a talented girl who grew up in an elite family and is trained to be a solider for the Republic, and Day, who is an infamous criminal who was born in the slums. They end up meeting through certain events involving the death of June's brother and become unlikely allies. 

            The book is written in first person present tense, but unlike some books (is totally not looking at Allegiant), Lu does a good job at writing this way. Usually this type of writing bothers me, but she managed to keep it interesting. There were varying sentence lengths and sometimes slightly more complex vocabulary.

            Also, the characters have a very distinct voice when the story is being told from their perspective. And if that voice wasn’t enough for you to tell the difference (as well as the character’s name at the start of the chapter), the font actually changes colour in my edition depending on whether you were reading from Day’s or June’s  perspective.

            Something strange that stood out was the fact that almost all of the characters mentioned seemed to be left handed. I’m not sure the reason for this, but it was mentioned enough that it caught my attention. A bit strange, really, considering most of the human population today seems to be right handed.

            The setting of the book is very well written. The description is phenomenal, making a clear picture of what was going on and what everything looked like – something that is very important in a book where the setting is different than it would normally be if it was set today.

            Overall, I’d give this book a four out of five. It wasn’t an outstanding book, and I’ve similar plots before, but it’s very well written and it is very interesting. The fact that I managed to finish it without forcing myself to continue reading is a pleasant change from the books I’ve had to read more recently for school. I will continue to read this series. I would recommend this book to any teenager who enjoys a mix of action with a hint of romance and wouldn't mind reading yet another book set in a dystopian society. 

Unwind Review

I apologise for not being able to post last week! On the night before I was planning on uploading, I had a giant essay to write that was due for IB English the next day. But I’m back again, and somewhat alive!

Dystopian books are starting to reach the level of being overdone and are a far too popular topic to write about. I, personally, am also not a fan of the genre. So when I went to pick up Unwind by Neal Shusterman at my friend’s request, I put it at the bottom of my “to read” pile. Once I finally got my bum around to reading it, I realised two things: The first being that this was an amazing book, the second being that I should really stop doubting my friend’s choice in books.

 

Unwind Cover. N.d. Photograph. Neal Shusterman: Unwind. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://www.storyman.com/books/unwind.html>.

What stood out to me the most about this book is that it actually had a plot that I had never, ever, ever seen before. This is a very rare thing, and because of that, I was extremely shocked. This book is about a society where unwanted children, instead of being sent to jail or grounded or whatnot, were “unwound”. This “unwinding” consisted of taking the limbs and organs of the person (under the age of 18) and using those pieces to replace a limb or an organ of someone who needed it. This way, they got rid of the unwanted child without fully killing them and they saved lives. The book follows the perspective of three children who were sent to be unwound who managed to escape (or in one character’s case – was somewhat kidnapped) and were on the run.

This book has a very chilling effect on the read. The most shocking thing about this book is that it is so well written that it actually seems like it could be happening right now. Everything else in society is fairly normal like it is now, with the exception of unwinding and a few other minor details. Shusterman does an excellent job at portraying this concept without creating an entirely differently world in the process (cough–Gone–cough). It was a very shocking read and, to some extent, did change my perspective on the world once I had finished it.

The main characters, the narrators, also are very dynamic. The trouble with some books in this genre is that sometimes the authors put too much thought into creating this crazy, perfectly imperfect, dystopian society that they forget to write more about how a character changes. This book managed to capture this perfectly. And the fact that it changes perspectives from three different characters gives the reader a much broader understanding of different classes and groups during this time as well so there was nothing lost on the development of the setting and culture either.

On the downside, I did feel like this book did drag on just a bit in times. Yes, yes, it is difficult to find a book that doesn’t do this, but this was one of those books that couldn’t hold my attention enough to finish it in a couple of days given the time. There were some scenes that seemed to stretch on forever, and though that could have been intentional by the author to show how the characters were feeling about a situation, I personally just found myself shoving a bookmark in and moving to another book in the hopes that would keep my attention.

Overall, keeping personal opinions to the side about the genre, I would give this book a 3. Every detail of this society was well executed, and the characters were very well developed, but it did drag on quite a bit at times and there were some parts where I was questioning the sanity of the author. Unwind was a book that changed my perspective on life around me, and I would recommend this book especially if you are looking for a dystopian book that doesn’t exactly follow the formula.