Hunger Games vs. Divergent: Book One

I have this thing where when I'm reading a good book and I think about the last good book I've read and it seems boring and fake and I can't understand how I even got through it. Then after I finish that book I look back and realize they were both good and it's a whole cycle. But that didn't really happen this time. 

I started with Divergent, the first book of the Divergent series. It was a Monday. I had forgotten a free reading book. So during lunch I asked my friend Arya to come to the library and help me choose a book, and she found Divergent for me, her 7th grade obsession. I started it and liked it. It's about a girl named Beatrice living in a dystopian Chicago where there are different factions that people belong to based on what they value/what they're good at. She and her family are in Abnegation, the faction that values selflessness...maybe a little too much. They aren't supposed to look in mirrors for more than a few seconds once in a while because that's selfish. They wear plain clothes and simple hairstyles and Beatrice feels like she doesn't quite belong, she isn't selfless enough. And then there's this test you take when you're sixteen, that determines what faction you truly belong in ("faction before blood.") but Beatrice's test result is unique and her life pretty much flips upside down when she chooses a different faction during her choosing ceremony. She ends up in battle training and simulations and a relationship with a boy she meets and in the middle of a war. 

It was entertaining enough. I liked the idea with the factions and the war made sense and I kind of liked Beatrice but it wasn't completely picturable. The places she went felt blank. Where she started felt blank. She's in her home, but there's not much of a description. Then she's at a testing place, at a ceremony. There's people at both places, more at the ceremony. But where were they? Was the test outside? Was the ceremony? Any description it gave was forgettable. Then she's in the new faction and all I can picture are bunk beds and for some strange reason, I sometimes imagined they were in the Kenney gym weight room or the cafeteria from High School Musical. I'm reading the dialogue, but when I can't really picture where they are and everything that is happening, it's just not as good. At some point she's playing capture the flag and there's a Ferris wheel. But where did that come from? I had imagined a brick wall or a black metal fence around a school-like place where she and the other sixteen year olds in the faction were training. But they got there by jumping off a moving train onto a roof and something where they fell on a net and then what? I wanted to see the wonder of the new place she was seeing, but I couldn't even understand what was going on.

But it was okay I guess and there was a cliffhanger at the end. So I finished it during the parent teacher conferences weekend and couldn't get the next book, Insurgent, but I still kind of wanted to. But I was on a reading spree and had some extra time. And I had been meaning to start the Hunger Games series, though I had been advised by my mom and my sister to wait because it was too violent for me. But everyone said it was good and so many people have read it I felt a little left out. So I started it. And it was amazing. After the first chapter I knew I wouldn't be checking out Insurgent on Monday, I would have to get through this series first. 

Book one of The Hunger Games solved all the problems I had with Divergent. I pictured each place, each character. It wasn't too violent. I know many of you have already read it, but I'll still give a short intro. It's a dystopian future with districts with different roles not unlike the factions from Divergent, except that there's no test or characteristics that would put you in a certain place. The districts are ruled by the Capitol and President Snow. The Capitol makes a boy and a girl aged 12-18 from each of the 12 districts participate in the hunger games once a year, where they must fight to the death, leaving one champion. The idea is that the hunger games show the districts the Capitol's power and punish them for their past rebellion. The main character, Katniss, if you don't know or haven't guessed, must fight in the games. I loved Katniss's personality. While Beatrice from Divergent was brave and likable enough, Katniss hardly ever annoyed me, and felt so real. She has anger towards the Capitol that drives her, her thoughts are so open and full of decision-making, many decisions that were humble and kind and brave, that almost always felt right. Also I could imagine the arena where the games take place very clearly because of all of the description, of how it felt, how it looked, the different parts of nature in it. And the story kept moving, something was almost always happening. In Divergent most of the book was training which wasn't very stay-up-till-12-the-night-before-cross-country-regionals like The Hunger Games was. 

I haven't read much dystopia until now and now I may have to start reading more of it because I didn't know what I was missing out on! I would sort of recommend Divergent but definitely recommend The Hunger Games.

-Janny

P.S. if you want a look at the whole Hunger Games series, definitely go back and read Jiya's post "Why The Hunger Games Series Will Always Have My Heart"