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Book: Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Series: The Divergent Trilogy, Book 2
Genre: Fiction/Young Adult/Sci-Fi/Dystopian
One choice can transform you–or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves–and herself–while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.
Tris’s initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable–and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.
This review will contain spoilers for Divergent. You can view my original spoiler-free Divergent review here.
Back when I reviewed Divergent I was quite unhappy with the book, and not for the normal reasons — the writing was flawless, and the action was gripping. I kept the review free of a lot of that annoyance, thankfully, but the issue still weighed on me…
It was about Al. Al’s this big, bullied Dauntless trainee from a troubled home who falls for our main girl Tris. Tris is happy being good friends with him, but his romantic feelings make her uncomfortable and she tries to avoid facing them. Then Al messes up and helps some of the more popular guys attack her in the middle of the night. He leaves when he realizes things are getting serious, but not before he’s smashed their friendship to smithereens.
Afterwards, Al tries to apologize. He’s clearly in a bad way, and Tris sees this, but she refuses to forgive him even when he shows that he’s really torn-up and desperate. At this point, I’m seeing all the warning signs and making a face a bit like this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6utE5APd4wA[/youtube]
Al kills himself. Tris doesn’t react to this with any kind of sympathy, in fact, she gets outright annoyed when they hold a service honoring him. And this angered me. I’m touchy about how mental illnesses and suicide is handled in fiction, and I felt like the book was deliberately taking an anti-suicide viewpoint completely opposed to my own feelings as a reader. It alienated me from Tris, it even made me uneasy about the author and hesitant to pick up the second book.
But I picked up Insurgent, and you know what? It made me feel so much better.
The two big issues I had with Divergent where Tris’ apathy over Al’s suicide and some confusion over the worldbuilding, and Insurgent really digs into both of these. Tris’ realizes she messed up by not forgiving Al when he begged for it, she regrets her actions, and we get to explore some of the deeper, more problematic elements of a world where everyone’s divided by their strengths.
Insurgent really is fantastic: the combat is well-researched, the injuries play out realistically, the politics and strategies are interesting without getting boring, and the main pair Tris and Four have this powerful argument-fueled relationship where they both have to try and balance out each other’s differences. This is the first book in the series where I’ve really, truly liked Tris as a character, and supported her actions, and it was great fun watching the story unfold.
Insurgent was a great example of how to improve on a first novel without slowing down the action. Now I’m really looking forward to the third book in the series.
As you probably know (being one of the priceless few who read my blog!), I loved DIVERGENT, and was a little nervous that INSURGENT had too much to live up to–could it be as good? In fact, I found it to be a little better! I like the point you make about Al. I don’t know if Veronica planned to resolve the issue of Tris’s reaction in the second book, or if she explored it in book 2 after realizing after the fact she needed to deal with it. Either way, like you, I’m glad she did. I’ve learned not to judge books hastily. One of the reasons I will read a book to the end, even if I’m not enjoying it, is that I want to give the writer a chance to resolve issues I have, or to see if that seemingly gratuitous or pointless scene really does have a point. And I suppose the same applies to series books–if book one was good, but had some points of real annoyance, perhaps book two will clear those points up?
Great review, Emma! :)
Thanks, Colin. I always try to give books a chance, though unnecessary use of rape/assault, suicide or mental illness bothers me a huge amount and it takes some solid writing to pull me through that. Now that I’ve got less time in the day to read, these issues handled poorly enough would probably make me put a book down.
Luckily Roth’s a great writer, enough for me to have faith in her, finish Divergent and buy the next book. :)