Divergent by Veronica Roth (American, 2011)

Summary:
It all started with The Great Peace, when society was divided into five factions (and five sectors): Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless and Erudite. Beatrice Prior, sixteen, Abnegation-born, has to choose where she belongs. During the Choosing Ceremony, adults over sixteen (also called dependents), have to choose whether they remain with the faction in which they were born or whether they want to transfer to a different faction. Beatrice Prior, now 'Tris', decides to transfer to Dauntless; but first, she has to make the cut. Initiation starts, which is but a series of tests all initiates, both faction-born and transfers have to pass if they wish to remain within a faction and become members. Dauntless initiates are ranked and only the top ten initiates are made members. Failing to make the cut from the initiation process from any faction results in a life without faction; in becoming factionless. In every faction there is but a short number of available jobs: the selfless, Abnegation, run the government; the Dauntless, the brave, are in charge of security; the Erudite, the knowledgeable, due to their endless pursuit of knowledge, are in charge of research and the development of technology such as simulation serums. Simulation serums are injected to dependents on the day before Choosing Day to help them choose a faction, and they're also used during Dauntless initiation. The serum creates a hallucination, a simulation that alters and controls the person's reality. Only Divergents can choose what they see; their reality. They are the only ones that are aware. Upon becoming a Dauntless member, Tris and her fellow Dauntless are injected with a new serum developed by the Erudite, who in their pursuit of knowledge have also been pursuing power. They have decided that Abnegation's interest (or lack of it) stands in the way of prosperity. Thus, secretly working hand in hand with the corrupt Dauntless leaders, the Erudite take control of a Dauntless serum injected to army of soldiers who are unable to escape a simulation and, with their help, they try to take down the Abnegation council member leaders. But Tris, who early on discovered that she is Divergent, ends the simulation and frees her faction from the Erudite's control. Tris, Four –another Divergent who helped free the Dauntless from Erudite–, what is left of their former faction (Abnegation) and their leader, Marcus Eaton, along with Caleb Prior, Tris' brother, all leave their former factions and seek refuge in Amity's sector of the city, unsure of what will happen of the faction system as they knew it.

Another summary:
The story is located in a postwar Chicago. To avoid more conflicts, society was divided into 5 different factions with a rigorous series of characteristics that defines each of them: Candor (the sincere ones, they are the ones that bring Justice), Abnegation (the altruistic, they are devoted to politics ), Dauntless (the brave, basically, soldiers), Amity (the peaceful ones, most of them farmers), and Erudition (the intelligent ones, they want to get into politics); there is also the abandoned ones (who do not have faction).
 
 The story introduces us to Beatriz, a girl born in Abnegation, she has already turned 16, at which age, people have to go to a ceremony to choose the faction to which they want to belong. The ceremony also includes a test to determine their aptitudes and see which faction suits them best; but the choice they make is definitive. For her surprise, Beatriz has aptitudes for Dauntless, Abnegation, and Erudition, something that is extremely rare: she is a divergent, which is dangerous, but she keeps it a secret.
 
 She chooses Dauntless and starts to train and improve as a soldier, earning the respect, the hate, and the love of the other members of Dauntless. While she is doing that, Erudition starts to attack Abnegation by means of propaganda. At some point, she discovers that erudition plans to use Dauntless to destroy Abnegation. Controlling Dauntless with the help of a serum, Erudition slaughters Abnegation. With Dauntless and Abnegation destroyed, and her family and friends dead, Beatrice ends among the abandoned.

Another summary:
Beatrice Prior lives in a post-apocalyptic future where society has been divided by personality traits. There are five factions in this world and each of them values a different characteristic. Abnegation values selflessness, Amity values peace, Erudite values intelligence, Candor values truthfulness, and Dauntless values bravery. At sixteen, teenagers take a test that determines in which faction they are best suited to live in and they then choose whatever faction they want. Beatrice belongs to the Abnegation faction and is given the test by a woman from Dauntless called Tori. Something does not go quite right and when the test is done Tori tells Beatrice that she is divergent, which means that she does not belong to just one faction but has qualities of multiple factions, specifically Abnegation, Erudite and Dauntless. Tori tells her to keep this a secret because being divergent is not something someone should be. At the ceremony, she is taken aback when her brother, the person she thought was the personification of Abnegation, decides to go to Erudite. Moments later, she chooses to go to Dauntless. The group of teenagers that have made this choice have to prove their worth before even arriving to the headquarters of the faction. They have to first jump onto a moving train and then out of it onto the roof of the building. A few are left behind, and a girl dies in the way. Once on the roof, they are expected to jump off of it. Scared as she is, Beatrice is the first to jump. At the bottom she is received by Four, one of her instructors. He asks her name and she says it is Tris. And so, a grueling initiation begins. It consists in three stages that are meant to train her body, so they teach them how to fight and use weapons. Tris makes a couple of friends with some other kids that also changed factions: Christina, Will, and Al. During the fighting sessions she also makes a couple of enemies with some of the more aggressive kids, like Peter. During these training sessions she notices how different her both instructors are: Four is more inclined towards a fair fight while Eric is more ruthless. At the end of the first stage, they are ranked. A boy named Edward is ranked at the top and Peter is not happy about this at all, which leads to an attack in which Edward is left blind of one eye. He leaves the faction for good, becoming factionless, which is a terrible thing to be because factionless people are basically homeless. After this first stage, there is a Visiting Day in which family members of the people who changed factions are allowed to visit. Unexpectedly, Tris’ mother comes to visit and warns her against letting people know that she is divergent. She also gives hints that she was once Dauntless herself. She leaves warning Tris to go visit her brother in Erudite to tell him to take a close look at the serum that is used for the faction tests and other simulations. At this time, there are many Erudite in the news-boards talking against Abnegation for being corrupt. Abnegation is the faction in charge of politics, mainly because they are a selfless faction and therefore not looking for power but the well-being of everyone. Erudite does not seem happy about this arrangement and has, for the past years, been talking badly about them in an attempt to strip them of their “power”. The second stage of initiation is meant to test their courage. They are induced into a simulation similar to the faction test but instead of random scenarios they are presented with scenarios that reenact the worst fears of each individual. In this stage Tris is ranked quite highly because her condition as divergent helps her to not only fight her fears but the simulation itself. Four tries to cover for her as he realizes she is divergent and, at the end of the stage, Tris is placed at the top. This results in her becoming Peter and his goons' next target. They get her at night and attempt to throw her off a cliff side that is inside the Dauntless complex. There she discovers that it is not only Peter and his friends but also Al, who she though was her friend. Four is passing by at that moment and he manages to save her and scare away and severely injure the rest of the guys. Due to this incident, Tris stops her friendship with Al, who had previously had a crush on her but had been turned down. Al can’t deal with the guilt and ends up throwing himself off the cliff, which leads to his death. After that, Tris and Four start to bond more and he invites her to his own personal fear simulations. She learns that his nickname comes from the fact that he has only four fears and that one of those is his father, a man from Abnegation who works with Tris’ father in politics. Tris then realizes that she knows Four’s real name, which is Tobias, and he asks her to call him that instead of his nickname. They kiss and go back to their usual activities. Tobias pays no attention to Tris the next day, which puzzles her. The third stage of the initiation comes around. This one requires the initiates to go through a fear simulation that is not their own. Tris fails drastically; Tobias is quite harsh on reprimanding her and she slaps him in anger and annoyance. She runs off out of the complex and makes it all the way to Erudite, where she looks for his brother. He seems to be quite into his role and faction when she passes on their mother’s message. She gets angry at him and they go their own way. Tris is caught by a couple of guards who take her to Jeannine. This woman is head of the Erudite and has been the main voice behind the accusations towards abnegation. She starts questioning Tris because she suspects her to be divergent, but Tris manages to mislead the woman. She is taken back to the Dauntless complex, where she gets in trouble for having run off. Tobias manages to convince Eric that she is not doing anything treacherous, that she was bitter after he rejected her, which is a lie. When they manage to be alone together again, Tobias tells Tris that he suspects that the Erudite are planning some sort of coup to take over everything. As the final passing test, Tris has to navigate through her fear landscapes while being observed by a group of leaders that serve as judges. She does that successfully and, when she is done, she reveals her true feelings towards Tobias, which have grown to be those of love. When the ranks and scores are decided, she turns out to be first. That night, though, all the Dauntless begin to move in a zombie-like trance. The serum they were previously injected is controlling them as they all seem to believe that they are in a simulation. Tris and Tobias are not affected by this as they are both divergent but they follow the crowd in an attempt to not be discovered. All the Dauntless are taken to the Abnegation district where they begin to fire against the innocent people. Tris and Tobias fight back but are both caught. Tris is taken somewhere to be put in a water tank, one of her fears, and Tobias is injected a stronger version of the serum and is controlled. Tris is saved by her mother, who takes her back to where some Abnegation politicians, including her father and Tobias’, are hidden. On the way there, Tris’ mother sacrifices herself to let Tris keep on going. Tris goes to where the refugees are and they decide that they have to stop the simulation, and to do this they need to go back to the Dauntless complex. Tris, her brother, her father and Tobias’ father make their way to Dauntless, where they find the main monitoring room where Tobias, completely controlled by the serum, is guarding the simulation. Tris manages to snap him out of it and they turn off the simulation. All the dauntless are liberated although some had already pledged alliance to the Erudite. Tris, her brother, Tobias and his father are barely able to escape from the Dauntless complex and make their way to Amity, expecting to get refuge. Tris’ father dies, like her mother, sacrificing himself to let her keep on going. The book ends with a war at hand between the Erudite who have made some Dauntless allies and the rest of the Dauntless who had been controlled.

World view: The world portrayed in the story is an hypothetical society which seems to be worse than the one the author lives in.
Future projections: It’s a negative emotional reaction against technological (transcendental, evolutive) or social progress. As such, It shows the horrible consequences of utopia or at least portrays skepticism or disappointment in regard to scientific or technological miracles.
Ideology: It constitutes itself as an ideal of enhanced social order achieved not necessarily by the abolition of ranks, but by the separation of wealth from power.
Characters, plot and writing style: The story features a rebellion against the adverse circumstances (revolutionaries may exploit newer technologies for these ends).
Classification: Non-dystopia