5
Tris is back
after the trauma she faced in Divergent. Since her youth in Abnegation, her
life has turned upside down and the world seems to be following the same track.
Yet it isn’t over, and as Tris comes to terms with her own demons, she has to
deal with the next stage in the plot, leading to the unexpected.
I’m having
the same problem many reviewers have with book. I want to sit here and talk
your ear off about almost everything that happened in the novel, but in doing
so I’d ruin the entire thing for you and anyone else. And then the double-sided
blade scenario comes into play because I don’t want to spoil Divergent for you
either: it is just as gripping and awesome.
So the best
I can do is a bit of relativity of Insurgent in comparison to Divergent.
Anticipation
There was
huge anticipation for this book and sometimes all that hype can ruin a book. It
was somewhat similar with Divergent. Last time, for Divergent, I really got
caught up in all that and frankly it lived up to that gargantuan expectation.
The thing was, I tried to not get mixed up with the stuff prior to Insurgent
for two reasons. One was purely personal, and if you follow me on twitter you
probably have a general idea of that. The other was that I’ve been disappointed
about hype a few times since I started blogging and the method I’m slowly
developing is to not get involved in it and so I can’t be disappointed. The
only reason I say all this is that I genuinely think this book deserved what
hype I was exposed to and I genuinely think it was a great book.
Action
I think this
book was about as action-packed as Divergent- they are dauntless after all! In
some ways this was something I was expecting, since I rarely find myself so
involved in fighting sequences in books. But these tended to draw me in, though
they lacked some of the lustre of Divergent- but I think that was Tris’ influence.
She loves her faction, but she’s still recovering psychologically and the
almost manic loss-of-self in the action is less pronounced.
Characters
Four/Tobias
was really great. In Divergent, my memory was that he went from International
Man of Mystery to…well, Tobias. Without getting into it too much, it’s almost
as though Four and Tobias are actually different people, which then links back
to the Divergent things. Holy… I think pontificating actually rendered
something vaguely sensible.
Tris got on
my wick a little bit though. I don’t begrudge her being depressed, nor do I
dislike the occasionally spontaneity of her, but I find part of me just wants
to grab her and shake her. As Tobias puts it, she’s so frustrating. Not wrong,
not hateable, she just makes me grind my teeth sometimes. I think the problem
is that I can see, understand and even emphasise a bit with her, but I think
she seems narrow-minded sometimes or inconsiderate of other things. It’s more
of a niggle but meh.
Plot
I thought
the plot was like a train journey before a huge crash. Strangely, this is a
good thing. It started off fairly slowly, which made sense, and then when it
got into the actually meat of the story it stayed fairly interesting. I think
Divergent was more involving as a story for the middle section and I would
stand by the belief that though the plot was good, it wasn’t perfect. It seemed
sometimes too straight-forward or bit repetitive, but like an action movie. You
sort of know what will happen, but you can still enjoy it. For me, the whole
ending sequence was just brilliant. This is why I use the train crash analogy:
you’d notice when you start to move, and you’d notice when you were on the main
section of the journey, but you simply can’t ignore it when you crash. I don’t
want to give away a thing about the ending though- I just want to say I thought
it was utterly brilliant.
Conclusion (!)
A great
book, and definitely a commendable sequel. It might not have been special in a
particular way, but that might only be because it followed Divergent which was
so fantastic. It’s a solid 5 for what it is and I’m oh-so-grateful to Karen for
getting this for me! If anyone liked Divergent, they should definitely look
into this.
