Insurgentby Veronica Roth
Series: Divergent #1
Pages: 525
Release Date: May 1, 2012
by Katherine Tegen ( an imprint of Harper)
Goodreads / Purchase
Fighting for survival in a shattered world… the truth is her only hope.
The thrillingly dark sequel to No. 1 New York Times bestseller, DIVERGENT.
I have done bad things. I can’t take them back, and they are part of who I am.
Tris has survived a brutal attack on her former home and family. But she has paid a terrible price. Wracked by grief and guilt, she becomes ever more reckless as she struggles to accept her new future.
Yet if Tris wants to uncover the truth about her world, she must be stronger than ever… because more shocking choices and sacrifices lie ahead.
The thrillingly dark sequel to No. 1 New York Times bestseller, DIVERGENT.
I have done bad things. I can’t take them back, and they are part of who I am.
Tris has survived a brutal attack on her former home and family. But she has paid a terrible price. Wracked by grief and guilt, she becomes ever more reckless as she struggles to accept her new future.
Yet if Tris wants to uncover the truth about her world, she must be stronger than ever… because more shocking choices and sacrifices lie ahead.
**SPOILERS**
I can't really put into words what I'm feeling right
now. This book was something, let me
tell you. So much better than the first
book.
There is just something about this book and series that
demands to be read. You are sucked into
the world and you don't want to leave.
This book was miles better than Divergent. The first thing is the story line. So much more happened in this book than in
the first book. There was a purpose to this
book, whereas I felt like Divergent was kind of pointless. But this story was fast-paced, complex, and
interesting. That being said...there
were still some issues.
Something that can be easily messed up in a book with such a
fast story and many escapes is the escapes are too easy. I did find that that happened a few times in
the book [SPOILER: most noticeably when Tris is captured by Eric and she's with a group
of other Divergent next to an elevator block (pg 193) and Tris stabs Eric then
starts to try to escape. There are
traitor Duantless around and they hold guns that shoot a gas that knocks out
everyone but Divergent. So Tris stabs
Eric and LUCKILY the only guns the traitor Dauntless have is the ones that have
the knock-out gas...which is stupid because obviously that won't work on any
enemy in the room because Tris and co are Divergent. SO WHY THE HELL WOULND'T THE TRAITOR
DAUNTLESS HAVE REAL GUNS?! Because they
didn't have real guns Tris and the other Divergents were able to escape ] but
other than that one event and a few others I felt like the escapes were very
well done and well-staged as well.
However I felt like Veronica Roth treated the reader like a
child. I consider myself to be pretty
smart and quick to catch on, so when a big thing happens in this book I think
it through and figure out what it means and what impact it has. But Roth has to write this huge revelation
scene then later go back and explain it.
Readers are pretty good at figuring out things and don't need to be
babied with information and have it explained to them. This happened at least twice and just kind of
annoyed me. One example:[SPOILER: when Tris and
Four and company are all with the Dauntless and they're taunting Four because
he's “scared” of his father. So Four is
like “This has got to stop” then he goes and punches his dad. Now I figured out immediately why he did
this, but for some reason Roth felt the need to spell it out like her readers
could never figure it out. ]
Other than that, pretty much everything else about this book
was awesome. It was a very addictive,
enjoyable book, which is why I gave it 4 stars.
As said in my review of Divergent, I was not very
impressed with how Roth [SPOILER: slipped in the war in the last 50 pages of the
book. But she developed the war very
well in this book and I was very impressed with her comeback. She kind of did the same kind of bad staging
for the next book in this book but she developed it more before the ending so
it worked out. ] I still would really like
the action scenes to be explained better because from her mediocre descriptions
I can't picture a scene.
There were several twists in this book that were like WHERE
THE HECK DID THAT COME FROM?! I have to
give Veronica Roth credit for staging things in such a way that later events
made perfect sense. Some things I
guessed [SPOILER: like Peter helping Tris escape when she gives herself to Jeneanne ] but
other I didn't see coming at all [SPOILER: LIKE CALEB FREAKING BETRAYING HER! ]
Now let's talk about the characters. If you guys remember, I wasn't a huge fan of
Tris (actually I hated her) in the first book.
But in this book I grew to like and respect her. She is super messed up after what happened in
the first book and she is much more vulnerable.
But in this book she is emotionally and mentally damaged and she becomes
a much deeper, darker character. I liked
that we got to see the vulnerable side of her and it made her seem more human
and definitely made her a more likable character. Plus there wasn't all this shit about how she
has to pretend to be weak like there was in the first book, so that helped.
However, I hated Four.
I never really liked him in the first place. Unlike in the first book, I didn't imagine
him as Theo James. Four is just a very
boring, underdeveloped character, even though we learned a bit more about him
in this book. But he was so
annoying! He wants Tris to tell him
everything but doesn’t want to tell her anything. That's not how a relationship works,
man! He shunned her and even when she
was hurting and crying and crushed he just assumed “she was fine.” Come on man, “find your humanity!” (OH YEAH
TANGLED QUOTE! I watch that movie way
too much). So I didn't enjoy the romance
at all.
Honestly I'm scared for this next book. [SPOILER: Roth killed off a few more loved characters
in this book (Marlene and Lynn, and of course Jenneane even though I hate her) ]
so I'm scared to see what she does in the final book *bites nails*.
4 stars
