** spoiler alert ** 
 Let's be honest and say the good before the bad. For the first book, not bad and it really speaks to the current YA market. The main character, Tris, is a heroine struggling with identity and personal clarity. Tris is an interesting antagonist in that she not perfect, she whines alot and is fairly self-centered throughout the book. Four, her love interest and trainer, is another emotionally crippled male side-kick who is believable to a point. Additionally, the premise of a divided culture rings true but lacks a clear explication for the more seasoned reader. The only information we are told is that at some point a disaster of epic proportions destroys the ecology and landscape of the American Midwest; thus a generation turns to "utopian" divisions to sustain am brittle peace. With all these 
 elements, on the surface this looks and feels like a promising successor to The Hunger Games, but it is not. 
 The downfall of the book is in the writing. The sustainabilry of progressive conflicts is based largely on the teenage patchwork and their illogical impulses. Some would say, "they are after all teenagers," but they are paper thin characters. Random choices are made without explanation; whereas, other moments and choices are brooded over for an entire chapter. Another flaw is that it's resolution happens entirely too quickly when compared to the rest of the pacing of the book. It took almost 100 pgs for Tris to really get going, another 200 pgs for the major conflict to be revealed, and finely another 100 pgs for a third antagonist to be introduced. This was almost three stories in one book.