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).

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.

Alex Rider Prequel: Russian Roulette Review

Anthony Horowitz has been one of my favourite authors for the longest time. I've gone through my Riordan and, regretfully, my Stephanie Meyer phases, but I always come back to the author who had written Alex Rider.

I had high hope for this book when I ordered it (it’s released in America on 1 October), and I have to say, this book does not disappoint. I devoured the book in less than two days and just wow.

So what is Russian Roulette? This book is a prequel to the Alex Rider series, though I would recommend reading through the first five books before this one due to spoilers. It’s the life story of the contract killer Yasha (Yassen) Gregorovich from when he was fourteen to when he meets Alex at the end of Stormbreaker. It starts off in third person in the prologue before switching over to first person as Yassen begins to read his diary (which, before you ask, is not written in diary entries).

 This book honestly shocked me. I always knew that Yassen had a rough childhood – I mean, he’s an assassin and clearly not a newbie. But I never realised how bad it was. The book, despite how quickly it moves along, is very descriptive without being over the top. It pulls you into young Yasha’s life (Yasha is Yassen’s real name) and doesn't let you go until the end. The settings are described very well to the point where even if one had never been there, they can picture it almost perfectly in their mind.

The plot itself was brilliant. It’s not often that books make me cry, but this one managed it within the first 25 pages. It was the perfect backstory for Yasha/Yassen, describing the hardships and the pain that he went through to get where he was in Stormbreaker. It explains almost everything about him that one may have wanted to know. As I mentioned earlier, the plot does move along pretty quickly since it’s most of Yasha/Yassen’s life in 400+ pages, but it doesn't detract from any of the details.

The character of Yasha/Yassen was mentioned in the Alex Rider books, but no detail was really gone into it. This book is his spotlight. It explains so much about the character in the books and it has a very developed plot. As a bonus, you also get to meet John Rider, Alex Rider’s father, for the very first time.

Overall, I’d give Russian Roulette a rating 4.5 out of 5. This book easily made my top ten books, with its illustrative details and intricate plot. I would recommend this book to anyone ages 14 and up. Maybe older, depending on their maturity is. A quick warning is that there is a moderate use of drugs, violence, and mentions of torture in this book, so if that makes you uncomfortable or is a trigger for you, you might want to avoid this book. But besides that, I would highly recommend this book to any YA reader who has read the Alex Rider books up through the fifth one, Scorpia.