good english

It turns out I'm not a huge fan of Roth's writing, although it's not offensively bad or anything like that, and I found the world of Divergent difficult to buy into . . . I still don't understand the purpose of the aptitude tests, since everyone chooses their own faction. And is this weird faction system just in Chicago, or is it US-wide? And how does everyone within this system not see how ridiculous it is? I got past that with my super-great Suspension of Disbelief powers, honed by years of quality teevee programming -- Doctor Who is great training for this sort of thing, you know.

And I have to say, despite the perfectly serviceable writing and silly government-as-a-series-of-cliques conceit, I found Divergent to be magnetic, and I loved the protagonist, Tris. It got even better once I got past the INCREDIBLY SLOW first half of the book. Weird pacing. We go step-by-step through Tris's choosing of her faction and the beginning of her initiation and then somehow we're at the end of the second initiation phase (how did she figure out what she needed to do within the simulations to get through them without arousing suspicion?).

But whatever, once you get past the slow stuff the plot goes BANG and runs away with the action. It's hard to put down after that. I finished the last digital page at 3:30 this morning. I REGRET NOTHING.

Oh, there's a predictable but cute romance in there, too -- which I just discovered has been portmanteaud into Fourtris, which just cracks me up FOREVER for some reason. There's a lot of face-touching involved in this romance, which got a little boring to read, but still, cute.

I found out this morning that there's a Divergent movie on the way, not surprising. I'll probably watch it on DVD. It's no Hunger Games but I think it will be fun to see on screen.