Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent, part two of Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, launches from the very moment at which book one, Divergent, finished. Literally. I think maybe a few minutes have passed, and this is just brilliant because I didn’t want to miss a single moment of Tris and Four’s story.

Insurgent manages to be different to Divergent and yet the same. I’m not going to say anything about the storyline for fear of raising Divergent spoilers, suffice to say that things have changed and Tris is fighting as hard as ever for the freedom to live as she chooses. The challenges thrown into her pathway - or whose pathways she decides to leap headlong into - are bigger, more life threatening, and have more far-reaching consequences than those she faced in Divergent. Roth has definitely stepped up the action and, while the choices Tris faced in Divergent were more personal, more about what was right for her and her small group of friends, those in Insurgent are more about honoring her parents’ legacy and seeking the greater truth.

The ever-dreamy Four, Tris’s love interest, suggests Tris is being reckless, but from her (and my) point of view, it it is more that she is trying to balance her Abnegation ideals and her Dauntless ideals, trying to do what she thinks and feels is right. And it turns out that the difference between her two factions are not that great: the Abnegations belief in selflessness is equal to Dauntless’ requirement of courage in the face of danger. Courage to do what is right, and courage to put others before yourself. Sometimes this requires self-sacrifice, something which the proud Four seems to have trouble understanding.

Actually, Four is rather blinkered throughout the whole story. Whether stubborn or prejudiced - or both - he refuses too see what Tris is trying to tell him (though, granted, she doesn’t really try that hard). While, as a reader, it gets a little frustrating that the two of them seem so doggedly stupid in their inability to simply communicate openly with one another, I guess they each have their reasons for shutting off. And, of course, this all adds to the tension. Not only did Roth keep me asking, ‘what is really going on, what is the truth?’ and ‘how is it all going to work out?’, but also ‘how are Tris and Four going to work out?’ The conflicts are well-developed; a relief because I think if done by a lesser writer, they could have been frustrating.

The biggest problem I have with Insurgent is that I am now going to have wait however long for the next installment. I would say to Veronica to hurry up and write it - actually, I will say exactly that - but with an amendment: take your time writing it, too, because I want it to be as good as parts one and two! And that’s no small pressure.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Its not very often that I re-read books. Not because I don’t want to, but because there are so many unread books out there. Thus, re-reading is usually reserved for when I’m unwell and need that comfort of something familiar, something that I know will work out alright in the end - Harry Potter or anything by Eva Ibbotsen. This week, though, I have been re-reading Veronica Roth’s Divergent.

What is Divergent about? I always have great difficulty trying to summarise Divergent for my customers at Waterstones. It’s set in a future world where society is comprised of five factions, each one characterised by the ideals it subscribes to. Citizens are born into a faction, but when they turn 16, they undergo an aptitude test to determine with which faction their temperament more closely adheres to. It’s the choice of a lifetime: to stay with their family or to change allegiance, and risk never seeing them again. Tris’s choice is made even harder; her aptitude test reveals that she is a divergent, that she has no single overriding aptitude. How can she possibly know which faction is going to be best one for her? And, even worse, if anyone discovers she is divergent, her life will be forfeit.

Clearly, there’s a lot more to this book and this world than the above. The boundaries between factions, instead of maintaining peace, as was the original intention, are breaking down. The factions are supposed to make everything black and white, but Tris is set to discover that the truth is usually grey. Factions, instead of leaving each other in respectful peace, are starting to criticise one another, to demand change. Is war on the horizon? And Tris’s chosen faction is definitely not what it seemed. People are out for power, and they aren’t going to let little things like morals get in their way. 

This is a novel written for teenagers, and so incorporates all the teenage standards and coming of age stuff: drama, action, a bit of romance, and learning to question what, in childhood, what was easily accepted. It’s great escapism, and that’s one of the reasons why I chose to re-read it. Another reason is the dreamy Four, who I defy anyone not to fall for. Also, the follow-up to Divergent is released in May - Insurgent - and I was having trouble remembering exactly what happened at the end of Divergent. I thought about just re-reading the last few chapters, but caved and decided I needed to learn about Four from the beginning all over again!

Verdict? It was as good this time around as it was the first time. There are a lot of teenage dystopian-style books on the market at the moment and this is definitely, in my opinion, one of the better ones. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve got a crush on Four. It compares favourably with Susanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, as well as Ally Condie’s fantastic Matched. They all tackle similar issues, granted - the role of government in determining the minutae of everyday life being a significant theme - and to someone who isn’t that bothered about teenage books they make look similar, because they tackle similar ideas (the utopia/dystopia boundary, governmental power and corruption), but each one has does have an originality rather than just hashing out the same basic storyline. And, even though I’d read it before, Divergent still got my heart pounding just as hard this time around.