I understand why Hunger Games captures and entrances us. But why don't more people realize that the feelings these texts evoke are the feelings that any fully-realized and even passably well-written world has to offer?
Having spent two very happy days of summer vacation lost in Veronica Roth's 2011 YA novel Divergent, I assure you, Dear Reader: Hunger Games is magic. But its magic is the magic of books and stories, nothing more secret or hard to come by, but every bit as sacred.
I enjoyed but never loved Hunger Games. But, despite its imperfections, I loved Divergent. Its heroine, Tris, is real and powerful, and she doesn't take herself too seriously, (At one tense moment she reminds herself: That is all I need: to remember who I am. And I am someone who does not let inconsequential things like boys and near-death experiences stop her.) and to my mind, she quickly becomes comfortable with her own power and agency in an easy manner that Katniss takes forever to embrace.
Divergent is smart, and so is Roth, who describes Tris's world as the result of her desire to write about "a subculture of people who want to eradicate fear using exposure therapy." (Curious? Read it.) When asked about writing Tris herself, Roth explains, "I did set myself a rule that was hard to follow, though: Tris is always the agent."
Stephenie Meyer, eat your heart out.
The world of Divergent yields its secrets at a satisfying pace, Tris's love interest is more worthy than Gale and Peeta put together, her relationship with him more real, and in the first book, Tris upsets the system of her world itself in a way that I longed for Katniss to attempt much sooner than she eventually did.
Tris wouldn't have won the Hunger Games. She would have made her own rules.
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