Book Review: Veronica Roth – “Insurgent”

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. (Source: amazon.com)

The 2nd book of the “Divergent” Series begins exactly where the 1st one ended, and there are no time gaps between both of them, which some people might enjoy, others don’t. Me, personally, was a bit surprised that it started at almost exactly the scene where it ended in “Divergent”, as I had expected at least a little time gap, a few weeks or something. But in retrospect, I think it was a good decision of Veronica Roth to write like this; that way, the story doesn’t forfeit anything of its rush, of it straight line of narration. The reader still feels like he/she’s part of the story, and it’s also a smart move of the author: once you ended “Divergent”, you want to start “Insurgent”, and as soon as you realized it’s starts where it left off, it’s absolutely impossible to put the book away (at least for me).

The two basic lines of the 2nd book are simple: love and secrets. Tris and Four (if you haven’t read my 1st blog about this series and only stumbled about this one, I won’t give away his real identity, to save you the suspense) struggle between their relationship that becomes stronger with each day and, at the same time, reasons that pile up infront of them, getting them into nasty fights over and over again. The fact that Four’s father and, in the middle of the book, even his mother – who had been announced dead for years – take part in the fight against the Erudite that try to take control of the other factions, doesn’t help: neither of them is trusted, and Tris finds herself on a thin line between deciding whether the greater good of the factions – meaning finding and revealing the truth about them – is more important than the relationship with the man she loves.

What I loved about the book was the fact that almost every main character seems to have to hide something; the secrets are practically jumping into your face, and just when you think you have found out one of them, something is scratching at the back of your mind, telling you that there is more to the situation than is out in the open. Especially Peter fascinated me in “Insurgent”. While he had been the biggest asshole on the planet in “Divergent”, trying to kill Tris two times,  devoting his life to make her life a living hell, he seems to have soften as the story goes on. It feels like he questions his earlier decisions, that he might become a good person after all…and what his story moves into in that 2nd book is definitely one of the highlights, because it is kind of surprising for the reader (though, personally, it was a bit predictable, but I think I’m just overly sensitive about these things).

Plus, the entire twists and turns in “Insurgent” were what practically glued me to my Kindle. You can never be sure which way one of the character turns, who will be left behind, what secrets are going to be revealed, and everytime, just when you think that Tris is done, or anyone of the others, the story does a turn and everything changes. It can be slightly annoying how often Tris and Four are at the edge of a break-up (that’s probably the thing that annoyed me a bit: the huge focus on their love story, but I think that’s part of how this series works), but when they find their way back to each other, the reader finds himself back in awe for them, anyways.

The end of the book was…flawless might be the best way to describe it. I love it when a book ends on a twist that you would’ve never expected the way it happened, because that’s what keeps you reading – especially when reading a book series. And the end of “Insurgent” definitely did that to me.

Resumé: thumbs up again for Veronica Roth and the 2nd book of the “Divergent” series, even if I – personally – enjoyed its predecessor a slightly bit more.