The line for a Veronica Roth book signing can snake down a hallway. It did on a recent weeknight at Navy Pier as Chicago fans clutched their books, some with worn edges, and waited to meet the famous local author.
Fifteen years ago, “Divergent” turned Roth into a bestselling author, landing at No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and turning into a successful movie starring Shailene Woodley as its heroine, Tris. At Navy Pier, readers who discovered the series in their adolescence waited in anticipation to meet Roth, whose new book “The Sixth Faction,” out Tuesday, brings readers back to the world that made her famous while also changing one of the key decisions in the story.
“Divergent” brought Roth a literary fame, but also a load of criticism that the author, who still lives in Chicago, has struggled to make sense of. She said she wrote her new book to release a weight.
“I had kind of carried around a lot of negativity about the series in the last 15 years. The way to lighten that load was to make something new,” Roth said.
“Divergent” is set in a futuristic Chicago that divides society into five factions built around virtues – Abnegation (The Selfless), Amity (The Peaceful), Candor (The Honest), Dauntless (The Brave) and Erudite (The Intelligent). Every 16-year-old must choose one.
Beatrice Prior, nicknamed Tris, originally picks Dauntless, where she learns to become a brave risk taker, jumping trains, rushing into frightful situations like volunteering to be a human target during a knife-throwing training. In “The Sixth Faction,” Roth designs an alternate universe with the same characters and Chicago setting. But something tragic happens at Tris’s choosing ceremony, and her life takes a completely different course.
For Roth, the “Divergent” series was the fulfillment of a dream. Its success gave her the career she’d dreamed of since her childhood, allowing her to pursue only passion projects.
While she said this freedom was invaluable, with widespread recognition came widespread criticism. She said many people reading dystopian fiction are looking for a critique of contemporary society, but that she didn’t intend for “Divergent” to read that way. Additionally, the original series concluded in a controversial way that upset many readers.
“I wasn’t prepared for the scale of it. I was really young,” said Roth, who was in her early 20s when “Divergent” debuted. “I wasn’t quite emotionally or mentally prepared for that much negativity in my life, and so I really sucked it in like a sponge, and that’s what I’ve had to unlearn.”
Roth credits therapy with helping her challenge the belief that negative criticism must be true simply because it hurts to hear. She has written at least 10 more books since “Divergent” was published in 2011. In addition to understanding how to emotionally handle criticism, she’s learned some practical things as a writer over the years.
“I am a much more rigorous outliner because I just don’t want to be in a position where I have to inherit what past Veronica did,” she said. “The original series was like the biggest learning experience of my life, and I thought I outlined it before I started. But then I got to the third book, ‘Allegiant,’ and I realized I had set some things up that I was gonna have a hard time figuring out, and so after doing that, I was like, never again.”
Roth said her approach to writing changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting on her own mortality made the author want to enjoy her work everyday.
“I need to worry less about other people and worry more about the joy and fulfillment of writing,” she said.
Fans with their own “what if?”s
At the Navy Pier signing, several fans said the alternate-universe concept struck a personal chord.
“I feel like the older I get, the more I’m asking myself, well, what if I did this instead? What if I chose that instead?” Hadeel Abderrhaman said. “Going back to a series that I loved as a child and being like, ‘Wait, like we actually get to see what if she chose differently?’”
Abderrhaman said she’s read every book in the series every year for 15 years.
Another fan, Dania Amora, discovered the series at her school’s Scholastic Book Fair when she was younger.
“‘Divergent’ literally changed my entire brain chemistry,” Amora said.
Shay Moore came into the series in high school, and she’s helped introduce the books to friends. She is certain that she is “absolutely divergent. I can’t be put in a box.”
Roth said she wrote the books so that readers who are not familiar with the original series can dive in.
“You don’t need any existing knowledge of ‘Divergent’ to understand it,” she said. “It was a very specific goal of mine to make sure that it didn’t feel like you had to read four books before you could read this one.”
Sara Booker, who attended the book-signing with a friend, decided to read the original series before the event. She said she binged the entire series in a week and a half, and that she now considers herself a larger fan of the fantasy genre.
“‘Divergent’ feels very much like a tourist going to Chicago,” Roth admitted of her original series. Her later books set in the same city feel “a little more grounded, like someone who lives here.” Roth has lived in Chicago since her early 20s.
Several fans at the book-signing said the Chicago setting is an explicit part of the series appeal for them.
What’s next
Roth has finished writing the sequel for “The Sixth Faction,” called “The Last Testimony,” set for release on Feb. 2, 2027. She said readers of the first book will understand that the story must take a drastically different course. Taking Tris on a different journey than the original one she wrote in Divergent was cathartic, Roth said.
“Writing books really exposes what you believe about humanity and whether people are capable of change,” Roth said. “This series is definitely like a treatise, an accidental treatise on that for me.”