In the 2010s, there were many a YA dystopian book hoping to be the next big thing on par with Twilight and Harry Potter. Among those contenders was Veronica Roth’s Divergent, which it ended its five-book run back in 2018.
Surprisingly, Roth revealed she’s got two books in the works that work as a retelling of the original story, starting with The Sixth Faction. Where the first Divergent book saw main character Beatrice Prior ally with the Dauntless—one of five in-universe factions representing personality traits—Faction mixes things up. When things go bad during her Choosing Ceremony, Tris winds up allied with the underground rebellion and meets her love interest Four again, but in a new context.
“I think the question of ‘who is Tris without Dauntless’ is an interesting one,” Roth told USA Today. If you know your fanfic, you know AUs eventually revisit beats from the source material, and these two books won’t shy from that. “For existing fans, I’m excited for them to see how the old and the new fold together. You’d think that certain things wouldn’t happen because she makes a different faction choice, but she does find her way to the same people. Seeing how that happens is a really fun part of it.”
Why is Divergent making a comeback now, other than nostalgia? The first book turns 15 on April 26, and a new novel can reignite interest in the series. But also consider what happens if Sixth Faction and its untitled sequel are hits: Lionsgate, which distributed the movies based on the books, has another dystopian YA franchise to revive. The Hunger Games came back with new books and films, so the studio may hope lightning can strike twice.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves: let’s first see how The Sixth Faction does when it releases October 6.
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