Roth, Veronica
Entry updated 13 May 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1988- ) US author whose Young Adult Dystopian Divergent sequence beginning with Divergent (2011) is set in a Near Future Chicago whose population has been divided into five "factions"; the young protagonist discovers on being tested that she is a Divergent, and therefore eligible to join more than one group. Her progress upwards through the ranks of the Dauntless faction, at times reminiscent of Ender's rise in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (1986), also evokes, in the brutal physicality and the gamelike structure of her conflicts, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games (2008). If anything, the picture darkens in Insurgent (2012), as the City itself is riven by factional wars, though the pluck and cleverness of the surviving protagonists does unsettle tyranny in the end, and bring the romantic elements necessary for the tale's market category into satisfactory focus. The tales assembled as The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future (coll 2019) are connected through their various emphases on sharply delineated, mostly Dystopian dramas; as with her novels in general, Roth's gaze upon the world is cuttingly sharp; she takes no prisoners, though Chosen Ones (2020), which depicts the Divergent cast a decade into adulthood, seems designed primarily as a launch pad for a perhaps darker longer narrative arc. [JC]
Veronica Anne Roth
born New York: 19 August 1988
works
series
Divergent
- Divergent (New York: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2011) [Divergent: hb/Joel Tippie]
- Insurgent (New York: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2012) [Divergent: hb/Joel Tippie]
- Divergent/Insurgent (New York: Science Fiction Book Club, 2013) [omni of the above two: Divergent: hb/Joel Tippie]
- Allegiant (New York: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2013) [Divergent: hb/Joel Tippie]
- Four (New York: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2013) [coll: stories and extra scenes: Divergent: hb/Joel Tippie]
- Chosen Ones (New York: HarperCollins/John Joseph Adams Books, 2020) [Divergent: hb/]
Carve the Mark
- Carve the Mark (New York: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2017) [Carve the Mark: hb/Jeff Huang]
- The Fates Divide (New York: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2018) [Carve the Mark: hb/Jeff Huang]
individual titles
- Poster Girl (New York: William Morrow, 2022) [hb/]
- Arch-Conspirator (New York: Tor, 2023) [hb/]
- When Among Crows (New York: Tor, 2024) [hb/Eleanor Piteira]
collections
- The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future (New York: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2019) [coll: hb/Ashley Mackenzie]
works as editor
- The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2021 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Mariner, 2021) [anth: pb/Wakomka/Getty]
about the author
- Leah Wilson, editor. Divergent Thinking: YA Authors on Veronica Roth's Divergent Trilogy (Dallas, Texas: BenBella Books, 2014) [nonfiction: anth: in the publisher's Smart Pop series: pb/]
links
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