Rush, rush... And a review of Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT

May flew by, but not without a bit of exciting reading. 

While setting up my company’s booth at the International Reading Association, I peeked next door and saw a postcard for Insurgent, the sequel to a book on my shelf at home.

“The first book in that series is on the top of my reading list at home,” I told an attendant. Some middle-aged guy working for a tiny publisher of books for the special education market had just admitted to reading a book for teenaged girls. Very suspicious.

And it wasn’t exactly true, but I’m glad I lied. When I got home and saw Divergent, the first book in the series, I started in on it very quickly. It was the most exciting teen novel I’d read since finishing Mockingjay, and that was a year and a half ago. (I read the first five Game of Thrones books in the interim, but that won’t compare very well for all the differences, and I reacted differently to Martin’s fantasy, anyway.)

It was so exciting, the next thing I read (aside from manga, stuff for work, or soccer training materials) was Catching Fire, which I just finished a few hours ago.

The bridges between Divergent and the Hunger Games series are urgency, a compelling dystopian setting, clockwork structure, and well-crafted teenage female leads.

The urgency of Divergent is less existential, at first. The problems Beatrice Prior faces are subtler and less immediately lethal than those faced by Katniss Everdeen. Somehow, the wrenching philosophical and emotional issues Beatrice faces rise to the level of urgency of Katniss’. Rereading Catching Fire reminded me not only how well Suzanne Collins wrote action sequences, but also how well she wrote interior monologue. The strands of conflict and significance revealed in the first chapter follow through each to the last, taut and humming. This is the urgency matched by Veronica Roth in Divergent.

Strange laws, a warped society, alien values or ways of expressing them, the transformation of the familiar into the strange—these are some of the elements that go into a believable dystopia. Both worlds—Panem and Veronica Roth’s Chicago—have somewhat simplistic organizations. Panem has twelve, or maybe thirteen (find out for yourself), districts and a Capitol region, spread out across the former United States. Each produces specific commodities or manufactures a class of products, almost as Roman colonies, but simplified. One district manufactures electronics, one mines coal, one produces textiles, and no others duplicate these categories. Two produce food: one terrestrial and one maritime. Readers can accept this unrealistic situation because the rest of the narrative is so immediately realistic, almost tactile. Collins is especially successful at evoking place, both in terms of sensation and in terms of emotion.

Roth’s Chicago is cleverly transformed in physical terms, but still recognizable. The crucial social organization is simplified and easily understood, but simplistic, the Faction as unrealistic as the Districts of Panem. In place of Districts producing distinct products, each Faction in Divergent subscribes to different values and norms of behavior. This, even more than the differences among districts in The Hunger Games trilogy, adds color to the story line.

This is a good point to make a transition from comparing the dystopias to comparing the high degree of organization common to the Hunger Games trilogy and Divergent. I felt that this was what distinguished Roth’s and Collins’ work from other teen fiction. At each stage, significant details are revealed that either set the stage for later, elaborate on a theme from earlier, or both. The heroine (protoheroine?) Beatrice Prior’s early-revealed fascination with the daring members of the Dauntlesss Faction makes more sense as layers of the society, Beatrice’s past, and her family’s past are revealed, adding layer upon layer of significance to events and situations that seem unimportant or ambiguous.

Collins ratchets up the emotional stress with each additional layer, threatening to overwhelm the reader. Roth weaves the strands of significance back and forth a little less intensely, at least within the first book, but in a similar manner.

One of the similarities in appeal between the Hunger Games trilogy and Divergent is in modeling personalities in the books after real-world teen concerns. In the Hunger Games, children are forced into combat in the arena each year. In Divergent, teens choose their faction at the age of 16, and are initiated or cast out depending on their ability to adapt to completely new rules. This is far more subtle a setup than the Hunger Games, and there’s no central villain in the arrangement, but the most notable difference is that the factions behave a lot like social cliques in some ways. Imagine social cliques with their own laws, territories, and lethal induction ceremonies, as well as hangouts, clothing styles, lingo, and forms of entertainment.

Aftertime, by Sophie Littlefield

Aftertime is a blow-to-the-gut, first of a series by veteran mystery writer Sophie Littlefield. The world she creates is a few years or a few months in our future, but vastly changed. Cass, the protagonist, arrives lost and confused, acts in desperation and fury, squeaking through conflicts and narrowly escaping moral danger and worse. Her heart is wracked by guilt; her body is ravaged by injury and disease; her mind is clouded by both. Cass’ way is uncertain, but she is driven to pursue it full tilt.

The physical descriptions are at times evocative and purely physical—the smell of the miracle plant “kaysev” cooking, for instance—while others are emotionally wrenching to read. This is not a book for children, even the fairly big kids. The frank and unsentimental descriptions of sex, of violence, of social decay are woven into the fabric of the book. They carry the plot along. They are much of what Littlefield wants us to see about Cass.

As a result, reading Aftertime did not go quickly for me. I generally prefer somewhat younger YA fare, or speculative fiction, science-fiction, or fantasy with more magic spells and telepathic dragons. Still, I could feel the story building, the protagonist changing, the world coming into clearer, and often painful, focus. And as it did, I felt more drawn to the story, as draining an experience as it was.

The end is cathartic. It has elements in common with the end of an action flick—I half-expected to hear the music from the end of Terminator II: Judgment Day, or see plumes of evaporating dry ice meant to convince me of a fire. The disturbing parts of the story were prelude to the resolution, but it’s a resolution that leaves the way clear to sequels. There is much in Cass’ world left to accomplish—to repair, to redress—and Cass is the woman for the job.

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[note: The author very politely points out that this is not "YA" - I've seen a lot of definitions of Young Adult lit, and this is very mature for kids, but if your young adults are twentysomethings, this is just about right; it's also okay for older people who want to feel like twentysomethings, though we have to watch out for heart stress - this is pretty powerful stuff.]

Woe is... George R. R. Martin's Guilt-Ridden Cast of Thousands

George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series starts with betrayal, execution, and a subtly magical bond between animals and people. After A Game of Thrones and most of A Clash of Kings, I have to conclude that it will not let up. We join the tale when the strands are well enfolded, lines of allegiance and affinity blurred and shifting. I read the story and thrill in the narrative, and despair for humanity.

It is a very human tale, setting and animal intelligence notwithstanding. Sure, there are dragons, but unlike in Martin’s partial namesake and obvious forebear Tolkien’s great works, the motives of people, regardless of access to magical power, are the chief cause of misery.

And Martin shapes that misery like a glassblower, with hammer, tongs, and breath. He twists a character’s fond hopes into wanton disregard for consequences, another’s protective instincts into acts that must be hidden from view at the cost of war and kingdom. There are no guiltless characters. Even the most blameless are wracked by guilt for smaller injuries, perceived and real, to relatives, friends, and allies living and dead.

This would all be terribly gloomy and uninteresting if the characters did not seem so terrifically human. They are not made human by being equally bad and good, or by appealing equally to the moral compass of any group of readers. They are made human by doing good and bad things for real reasons. Prince Joffrey is an insufferable prick, for example, and hugely more important in his own eyes even than his greatest manipulators’, but the way he became that is hinted at from his introduction. Nowhere is his bad behavior blamed on his parents’ frosty marriage or the laxness of guidance for a firstborn prince, but we know the type.

The good characters, too, are bad. Some make foolish choices (Jon Snow at the Skirling Pass in A Clash of Kings, for instance. Yet they make foolish choices for intelligible reasons. I despair of Sansa Stark becoming a whole person before she is destroyed, yet Martin seems to be developing a depth there, perhaps only later to kill her off or make her a pawn in an evil scheme. (Another evil scheme, I mean.)

The Lannisters are almost wholly awful, but fascinating to watch. The narrative is full without much of the father Tywin, but he looms menacingly throughout the second book in the series, promising at any moment to burst on the scene – and burn it to the ground. The daughter Cersei never seems to begin to promise a hint of humanity without redoubling her utter awfulness on the rebound. Her twin brother is less subtly awful, yet fascinating to watch. I think other readers may like me keep hoping he gets some comeuppance that sticks.

The other Lannister brother is the most interesting by far of them. Along with the Stark bastard Jon Snow and his trueborn sister Arya, he moves the story through switchbacks and over precipices. The way the three of them literally traverse space in the narrative seems brighter and sharper as well. Many characters end up somewhere distant, but it seems Jon, Arya, and Tyrion have the most interesting journeys.

Martin is a master not only of plot twists involving a cast of thousands, but also of descriptions of place. I was looking at a service stairway in a Chicago subway on my way back from a business trip today, and realized that it was grey, grimy and worn, probably cool and dry to the touch. I realized that my own places – the places I’ve written about in drafts and stuttering starts – lack the fullness of detail that allows readers to imagine themselves doing what the character is doing.

It may be this or it may be the contingent and frail morals of the characters, and it is more likely both, that brings the impossible stories to life.

This is a more significant accomplishment in the case of the part of the story that takes place off the map supplied in the front of the first two books. I can’t decide why I think Martin provides a map, in some detail, of the small continent of Westeros, while having a significant chunk of the story take place across the Narrow Sea, as it’s called in the narrative (but not labeled on the map).

Perhaps it’s because readers are to think of the events and people there as more exotic, but that seems shallow when compared to Martin’s other devices.

It may be that Martin’s map reflects the view of many of his characters, that over-the-seas is unknown, and denies us a view of it as terra cognita. It may also be related to the prevailing view of magic.

This is one of the issues that, to me, bedevils fantasy. Because magic is so widely considered a childlike interest in our culture (at least, magic not cloaked in widely accepted religious faiths), can a fantasy writer appeal to mature audiences with stories about dragons and spells and wizards and potions?

I think the answer lies somewhere near the observation that all of these magical story elements and more exist in the Song of Ice and Fire series. However, many characters major and minor disbelieve, or are skeptical, or come to question their faiths, despite the evidence in the books of such magics. It is a world in which, to borrow phrases and concepts from Janet Rowling, the wizarding community and muggles live side-by-side, aware of each other, and often sliding across the boundaries.

I have a few more chapters left, and then I have to make a fateful decision. Do I continue to race through the available volumes in the series, ensuring that I’ll finish reading years before Martin can come out with another epic volume of this epic, or do I break the spell and read the next book in the pile? This is a hard one.