For all of the hype and millions of copies sold of this book I've got to admit I didn't really like it and by books end I had no desire to read the sequels. I'm really tired of first person narration and teen angst books but I understand why teens are reading these kinds of books in the millions - as the best sellers lists testifies. These kinds of stories really connect with the emotional roller coaster of being a teen - so I'm not a target audience for this kind of book because I'm not a teenager anymore so I have a hard time connecting with the characters in this book. No matter what now, these dystopian books are going to be compared with The Hunger Games - this book is no different and the similarities are obvious as are the ways Suzzane Collins' book is much better. Also I've read a lot of sci-fi and the similarities between this book and Ender's Game are there in abundance also, with Ender's Game being far and away the superior novel. This book just felt like it was drawing on all sorts of other parts of art, which isn't a bad thing because all writers do this, but I just never got the feeling that Roth created her own beast everything - to me - felt artificial.
Despite being in first person narration I never really got to know the main character as a person. She felt real distant to me, not so much a person as just blank guide to lead me through the world of the book. Other side characters were more interesting and seemed to be more fleshed out than the main narrator and those characters I wanted to know about and in my opinion that's not a good thing when side characters seem more interesting than the main character. I've read The Hunger Games trilogy and Catniss - as the narrator - seemed much more fleshed out and real even as she swam the ocean of those teenage emotions. Tris just doesn't have the depth to sustain this story and she seemed more created than real and as I've said before you create a good character and that character can guide the audience through anything no matter how far fetched or insanely crazy the story line becomes, that main character will make navigating everything interesting.
I also didn't buy into the world building of Roth. I never got a really good picture of the world around Tris. It seemed more artificial than real with no real explanation for anything that was going on in the world and that really bothered me as world building of this type of novel needs to be good.
Slow building is always better than quick building. Quick building always feels rushed, see this book and The Mortal Instruments books (first two) for some good examples of quick building. Where as The Hunger Games and Harry Potter build things slowly without trying to summon everything up in the last few pages. Roth does the opposite of this here as the heroes quickly beat the villain in the last few pages even when the odds are hugely against them, this never sets well with me as logical it makes no sense. I also hate it when the villain acts brutal and vicious only in certain scenes than seems to forget they're a villain in other scenes. This kind of inconsistency annoys me to no end - see The Mortal Instruments books for some great examples of this, which is one of the reasons I didn't finish that series.
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