Diverging into Divergent Series

After finally getting through what George R.R. Martin has produced for us so far with his A Song of Ice and Fire series, I decided to begin a different series, albeit one that may be a bit lighter in nature.  So I picked Veronica Roth's very popular Divergent series to pursue.  Appropriately, the first book is also titled Divergent, and I've flown through the first few chapters already.  The targeted reading audience for Divergent is "young adult", a demographic category that I occasionally delude myself into believing that I belong to.

The setting in which Divergent takes place is off in the distant future in the heart of a decayed Chicago.  At some time in their distant past (and in our own more immediate future), an as-yet-unspecified apocalypse had occurred which sent civilization into basic survival mode.  A new societal structure was formed in which people were sorted into one of five life-long "factions" that conformed to their main personality types: Candor, for those seeking truth; Erudite, for those seeking knowledge; Dauntless, for those valuing courage; Abnegation, for those emphasizing selflessness; and Amity, for those emphasizing friendliness.  The protagonist is Beatrice Prior, who just turned sixteen and belongs to an Abnegation family.  But now she has to undergo a "test" to determine her real inclination before the upcoming Choosing Ceremony in which she chooses which faction she'll belong in for the remainder of her days. 

The writing in Divergent is smooth and interesting.  The factions remind me quite a lot of the four Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravensclaw, and Hufflepuff) in the Harry Potter series...it's easy to see that the author might possibly have derived from them when she conceived her own series.

The Divergent series is a trilogy, and the final volume was published last year...so unlike with Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire I won't have to wait very long for the next in the series.  The idea of dividing humanity according to personality types intrigues me, and I am looking forward to seeing how Veronica Roth handles it...