Divergent, the first in the Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth, is one of the best YA novels I have read this year. And, due to a rash of really, really good YA novels being recommended to me, I’ve gone through quite a few.

Beatrice Prior grew up in Abnegation, where adherents champion the virtue of selfless-ness, but it never came easy to her. So when it came time to pick the faction she would spend the rest of her life in, the choice was not as easy as she thought it would be. Do as everyone expected and pick Abnegation, prove her dedication by sacrificing her own desires to the faction, or do something else. Something…brave?

It isn’t a choice to be made lightly. It cannot be unmade and pick the wrong faction, fail to prove you belong, and end up factionless, in the gutters of society without purpose or hope of improvement.

Everyone has the same choices. Except for Beatrice, Tris, who has a secret she can’t tell anyone and doesn’t understand. A secret that means she’s Divergent and dangerous.

When a friend first recommended Divergent to me, I hesitated because it sounded a bit too high-concept – the sort of book where narrative and world-building take a backseat to a philosophical ideal. I was wrong. Divergent is, from page one, a completely solid world with no cracks or crevices to lodge a critical crowbar. Roth might have a message, but she isn’t going to let the story suffer for it.

The basic premise is that in the wake of a devastating series of wars people got together and decided that they had to dedicate themselves to the highest ideal of humanity in order to prevent anything like this happening again. Of course, they couldn’t agree on what the highest ideal was. Bravery? Honesty? Selflessness? So each Faction was formed in service of the quality they though most important. Candour never lied, Abnegation acted for others first, always, and eshewed any sense of self, Dauntless was aggressively, physically brave, Erudite hoarded knowledge and Amity got along to get along. It was bound to all end in tears one day, one way or another.

Roth does a marvelous job of sketching out the best, and worst, quality of each faction, despite being limited to Tris’ restricted viewpoint of each. The Candor faction are honest and forthright, but they can be cruel to no point as well. Dauntless are gleeful and free-spirited, but how free can it be when it is mandated? And they only recognize one sort of bravery. Abnegation’s weakness is the plot of the book. Amity is the least represented Faction, but their mandated avoidance of any sort of conflict has its inbuilt weakness.

Erudite are, unfortunately, just evil. They are the only faction to be without any apparent saving grace, something I hope Roth undermines in the next two installments.

The tensions between the various factions have started to come to a head, sending fault-lines through a community too rigidly structured to adapt and respond, but we only see that in glimpses: a smuggled in newspaper used to taunt Tris, a muttered conversation here or uncomfortable avoidance there. The reader can sense the building tension, but Tris is focused on her examinations. She made her choice and now she has to prove it was the right one, unless she wants to end up factionless or dead. Her new faction is brutally demanding, winnowing away the unworthy test-score by test-score, and doesn’t leave her much time to think about politics. Not until it’s almost too late.

Tris is a marvelous character. She is flawed but well-meaning, basically kind but worried that is a weakness in her new life and determined to prove to herself, and everyone else, that she made the right choice – even as she starts to think she might not have. For all her flaws – and occasional hypocrisy – Tris is ultimately likable and willing to admit her mistakes once she has enough emotional distance to accept she made one.

More importantly – and impressively – Tris viewpoint is maintained with such a delicate hand throughout the novel, that the reader needs that distance to see the mistakes too. Roth keeps the readers tight to the narrative, ratcheting the tension up with every chapter so they don’t get the ‘down-time’ to pick apart Tris’ mistakes, from beginning to end.

It helps that, for me, at least, it isn’t entirely clear what the story is going to be. Usually, once you have read a few books in a genre, you can guess the rough direction in which the story is going to take you. Divergent was different – there were so many places where the plot could have taken Tris that it was hard to read ahead and tell which challenges she was almost certain to survive and which the plot might make her fail. It kept me on the edge of my seat, anyhow.

Divergent is a brilliant novel and one I would recommend regardless of age. (Well, obviously not to a three year old – but you know what I mean.) It is a novel that while clearly YA, never ‘dumbs itself down’ to its target audience’s supposed level. The tension and occasional violence is never elided or bowdlerized, it is simply seen through Tris’ eyes and understanding.

My only…not complaint, but hope…would that we get to see more of the other Factions in the next two installments. I would enjoy seeing more of their internal politics and response to the situation that Roth ends Divergent on. Even if Roth doesn’t deal more with them, however, the next two books will still be well worth reading.