It's a lower three star rating than my usual, but enough to bump it up from two to three. I'll write a better collection of my thoughts on INSURGENT later this week, hopefully.

Update: Okay, let me try and explain my rating of this book. Naturally, spoilers! Spoilers everywhere! I'm gonna put it under the GR spoiler hider just in case. Also, I bumped it down a star because Lynn. This book did Lynn so wrong.

First, I'll write what I liked about INSURGENT... and then the stuff I really, really didn't like.

The Good:

Tris showed some actual character growth, or at least responded to situations like a human being, not a walking plot device. She clearly has PTSD related traumas from the events of DIVERGENT, especially the finale, and who can blame her? She saw both her parents die and she herself was forced to kill one of her Dauntless comrades in order to survive. She is plagued with guilt and the horror of her actions, and it follows her into INSURGENT.

Four, err, Tobias, is more bearable in this book than the first one. We see him out of the strict confines of Dauntless society and he has room to grow out of his faction's shadow.

The book raises ideas that the first book was afraid to - like how not every single member of Erudite is a sinister nerd bent on the destruction of every other faction, and that sometimes doing the right thing according to your own code means doing something bad according to everyone else's. Especially when Tris goes against her entire faction and Four in an attempt to save everyone during the INSURGENT finale.

We finally see how the factionless live and that it is possible to live in a society without factions and compartmentalizing personality traits like a dummy. They've learned how to survive in harsh conditions because they were abandoned and left to inhabit the worst places to live, and it made them stronger in the end.

Tris' narrative is no longer filled with needlessly mean thoughts about other women's appearances, as if she has to compete with them looks-wise. Even with Johanna's scar - in the end, Tris comes to see it as a part of what makes Johanna beautiful and strong, not a disfigurement to be hidden away. Plus, we are no longer subjected to descriptions of the Erudite leader's love handles, thank goodness.

The Crap. The Crappy Crap Crap:

I still don't understand why Tris is so goddamn valuable as a fighter or a Dauntless or even a Divergent. She spends most of the book 1) moping 2) being captured or 3) getting herself into trouble and endangering the safety of her loved ones and friends. She is not the only Divergent around - certainly not the only one with Erudite leanings - so why does everyone look to her for guidance?

This is a teenage girl who just lost her parents, has been stripped away from her old faction, can't even use a gun without feeling sick, isn't terribly strong physically, often lets her feelings for Tobias overtake her common sense - and y'all are making her the unofficial guidance counselor and leader of this mission? Man, look... They continually dump on Tris, then get mad when she messes up, the dumps on her more stuff, and this cycle isn't fun to read.

The Tris/Four relationship is irritating. They spend a lot of INSURGENT fighting or angrily making out. They do not have a healthy relationship, and instead of setting aside half an hour to talk out their issues, they keep butting heads and continuing their inane misunderstandings. I get that Veronica Roth is making theirs a troubled wartime romance but it doesn't work for me.

GLASSES DON'T MAKE YOU SMART. All of Erudite wear glasses because it's a marker of intelligence? What a terrible stereotype. Then again, all factions are ridiculously filled with personality stereotypes - the Dauntless are adrenaline junkies and meatheads, the Abnegation are giving to the point that it destroys them, the Amity are hippie eco-warriors who make flower crowns and are painfully neutral, et cetera.

Did you know Lynn was in love with Marlene? Or that she was a lesbian? Of course, the book waits until LYNN IS DYING to tell us this. That is just BS. That is a cowardly way to introduce LGBT characters into a book - outing them in their dying breath. Queer characters do not exist as canon fodder to make your tragically heterosexual characters more traumatized and sad. Naturally, at this point, Lynn is the only confirmed queer character in the series and she's dead. Uggggggggh.

The Caleb Is a Traitor reveal was so obvious, but this book tried to act like it was a big surprise. Listen, you can't continually drop red flags into Caleb's scenes then pretend his Erudite leanings are a major plot twist. I was kind of hoping Roth would flip the script and it would be someone else but nope, it was Caleb. Luckily, Caleb always felt underdeveloped to me, so seeing him go rogue wasn't a huge loss.

Factions are stupid. Factions are stupid. FACTIONS ARE STUPID.

The shocking twist at the end of INSURGENT was just . . . I have no words, except WHO THOUGHT THIS SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE WAS A GOOD IDEA, HOW DID NO ONE SEE THAT IT WOULD LEAD TO MORE PAIN AND UPSET THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

I'm still going to read the final book, though. The library already has it in transit for me. It will be a relief to finish this series and put it behind me. ( )

Insurgent was everything I wanted. Veronica Roth did an amazing job. Insurgent reached all my expectations. After reading Insurgent, I think the Divergent will save the world.
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Had to force myself to finish this one. ( )

so i knew the divergent series was a very popular series and then my friend called me about it and i was like, “yeah, i have got to read this right now.” and for a couple months i kind of let it slide, thinking that i would read it when i got around to it and got my hands on all three books which would take a while.

and then i saw insurgent and allegiant on the shelves, and i was like, whoops! i need these. now, i read insurgent in one day, and then i immediately picked up allegiant and read that in about five hours, so just be aware that this is kind of me after reading allegiant in the shock that follows.

i haven’t read divergent in a while, i think i might have read it last year, but insurgent does a pretty good job of reminding you the important things that happened. it was a book that kept me going, and it was a book that made me feel. i think the ideas of the factions are good, and the takedown of the factions was a violent one.

jeanine’s secret hung over everything, to the point where it was dangerous for all the characters, and let me tell you, veronica roth has no problem killing a lot of them off. many of the deaths made me gasp; i didn’t want them to die, even though i didn’t know them too well. one death irked me, the fact that a queer character came out on their literal deathbed. which seemed. uh. yeah, as a queer kid, that was kinda annoying. but it gets better in allegiant (no pun intended).

one of the things i really loved about insurgent was the dysfunctional eaton family. god, they had such a great dynamic, all of them - marco and evelyn and tobias. it was interesting to watch and kind of like a train wreck in progress, but that's a great thing. all of them are against each other and i like how there’s not just two sides, there’s three, and tris and co are caught in the middle of two sides - the factionless and the factions - and neither of them are particularly good. so they go created their own ones. it's not a two-sided battle at all. yes, jeanine’s killing the divergent and torturing them with experiments, but evelyn’s not good either. she’s really not.

as for characters, i really liked tris. tris is a young adult heroine who manages to hold her own, much like katniss; the romance is there, and yes it’s kind of annoying (for me - i am not very fond of romance, really, unless it honestly manages to capture my heart and i relate to the characters) but at least it’s not a love triangle. that’s what i liked. no love triangle. but tris - oh, tris. i liked her a lot in this book and she had very realistic fears and reactions; she’s dauntless when she needs to be (puns all over the place), and sometimes does not think. she’s selflessly reckless a lot of the time.

i liked that there was a big focus on tris’ parents. and also will. i liked that tris suffered, it made her more realistic. she’s sarcastic, she’s willing to do anything to save her friends and one of the themes in the story is debts, how to repay them, and owing people - as shown with peter later in the story - and sacrifice, and it all leads up to allegiant and the conclusion of the series, and the cliffhanger—

that was a cliffhanger.

at least i had allegiant next to me.

this book is a 9/10 ( )

The second book in Veronica Roth's Divergent series continues to follow 16-year-old Tris Prior as she struggles to make sense of her world as it crumbles around her. Tris has finally embraced her divergence but must now figure out what to do about the danger it places on those closest to her. She must make peace with herself as she battles guilt, grief, and loss and tries to decide whose love and loyalty is true, all while she continues to face her circumstances which are growing more dire by the hour. How can she choose who to trust and believe as the society she knew continues to swirl around her in a vortex of chaos and betrayal? Insurgent is a captivating sequel and will pull you along as Tris struggles to make sense of it all.

Bettina P. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

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