It took me a couple weeks to read the last 300 pages of Insurgent, but whenever I did sat down to read it? I burned right through it. One of the immediate things I noticed about this book that differed from Divergent was how relentless the pace was. As I was near the end of the book, I tried to remember that this book started in Amity, and it felt like A MILLION YEARS AGO.Â
That’s both a good thing and a bad thing.
Trigger Warning: For discussion of death, queerbaiting.
I’ll start off by saying that I liked Insurgent a lot more than Divergent, but the same problems I had with the first novel – the pervasive dangling of the carrot, the inability to understand the worldbuilding based on what the text provides, issues with representation, having Tris and Tobias fight constantly – are simply exacerbated here. There’s a lot more to like in Insurgent, though, and the detailed exploration of all five factions was GREATLY APPRECIATED. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY I WAS THAT ALL FIVE FACTIONS WERE A SETTING AT ONE POINT.
So let’s talk about some of the more positive aspects of this book. Point blank, the writing is just better. More flowery when it needed to be, much more brutal and plain when Veronica Roth was in the midst of the action. I know that’s a big reason why I felt so much more comfortable with the pacing of the novel. I’m sure that getting used to first-person present played a part of it, but I don’t think it’s the sole reason. Roth’s writing respects Tris’s point of view because she allows her main character to be unflinchingly honest, even if that means she is expressing things that are uncomfortable, rude, or flawed. The text much more readily offers criticism of Tris’s behavior, growing her towards the person she is at the end of the novel, and goddamn, it’s so satisfying. I like Tris! I like that she’s so aware of her own failings, but that this doesn’t stop her. She gets close to that, but holy shit, y’all, that moment when she’s about to be executed, and she realizes she wants to live? It’s a huge bit of development for her character, and Roth handles it wonderfully.
The same goes for a ton of the supporting characters. While Janine still seems nothing more than a textbook villain, I’d say pretty much every other character has depth and detail to them. We learn so much more about Tobias (through the Candor’s truth serum, THAT SCENE WAS WILD); Christina is an integral part of the narrative, right up to the final chapters; Peter is given characterization that is infuriating but extremely realistic. (A note on Peter: I am so into the fact that his “redemption” is not really a redemption at all. He’s still an asshole, and his justification for saving Tris doesn’t excuse his past actions or make him an angel. BRAVO, ROTH. That was a bold and satisfying thing to do, because people like Peter? They’ve got so much shit to unpack in order to change. A single act can be a catalyst, but it’s not the lone solution.) Caleb is… very fascinating, and I feel like it’s impossible to analyze his character because his choice to betray Tris is based on what we find out in the reveal in the final chapter. I NEED TO KNOW SO MUCH MORE.
There are a lot of characters here, and y’all know I love ensemble casts like this in fiction. I do have a criticism about this that I’ll save for later, but the Divergent world felt so much more real and varied once Roth explored everyone. And jesus, I don’t think I could cover ever single character here. Eric? Lynn? Shaunna? Max? Marcus? Evelyn??? (WHAT THE FUCK SHE’S ALIVE.) Edward? Uriah? Cara? Susan? Johanna??? TORI OH MY GOD. Here’s what’s so great about this: Each of these characters matter. For the most part, they affect the plot in a significant way, so much so that if you took them out of this book, the book wouldn’t be the same.
Of course, Tris is at the heart of this, and I definitely think her journey of identity and acceptance and DEALING WITH TRAUMA is vital to the narrative. I mean, one of the biggest plots here is Tris coping with the trauma of having killed Will at the end of Divergent. It’s so important that it’s literally the last obstacle she faces before she finally gets to Jeanine. AND THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME. I’m already biased in favor of stories that validate the problems around coping with violent trauma, and I’m thankful that Roth doesn’t shy away from this in any way. Granted, practically everyone in this book is fucked up by the trauma of the last couple months, but by making this a prime issue that her main character struggles with, we get an intimate view of the shame and pain a person might go through because of this.
Now, I realize that by doing single, one-off reviews like this, we’re missing one of the things that I like about Mark Reads: the development of my feelings towards a book. Hell, I’m so used to it that I’ve had trouble figuring out how to do this lone reviews. I’M SO USED TO ONLY HAVING 20 PAGES TO TALK ABOUT, NOT NEARLY 600. I usually get like 20,000 words to talk about a book, and doing that in 1,500 inherently means that this cannot communicate my thoughts or my criticism in as much detail. So! I started this off with the more positive feelings I had because I really do want folks to come away from this understanding that I enjoyed reading Insurgent. My negative criticism is separated merely for organizational purposes, despite that it might seem like I’m being harsh. I don’t know, IT IS A CHALLENGE FOR ME. But I like the challenge, and I like that I get to discuss MORE BOOKS with y’all.
Having said that, let’s start with my first big complaint: About halfway through this novel, I was utterly exhausted by Tris and Tobias fighting. Perhaps that’s the point, and Roth meant to exhaust me. I understood that both of these characters were in the midst of complex emotional conflicts and that this did not make them conducive to being in a relationship. But I could predict (nearly perfectly) the exact moment that Tris and Tobias would argue by about page 250. It was frustrating because their problems with communication were so obvious, to the point that I felt like both characters knew what they needed to solve them, and yet they simply chose not to. Ultimately, the conflict between these two felt forced, particularly when it’s “resolved” by the end of the novel by having Tris realize that her validation as a person relies so heavily on her love for Tobias. It’s… weird! I’m definitely invested in Tris healing entirely independent of everyone else. And by having that growth tied so intrinsically to Tobias felt really strange!
But I definitely understand why that conflict is there. I am less understanding of one particularly grating trope that appears here: introduce a lesbian, and KILL HER OFF IN THE NOVEL AFTER YOU FINALLY REVEAL THAT THERE ARE LESBIANS IN THIS BOOK. What the fuck, NO. NO!!! Look, if I’m not being clear here, allow me to be so: All creators forever do not get to claim “representation” if they kill off their “representation” after introducing them. THEY ARE LITERALLY NOT REPRESENTED ANYMORE IF THEY ARE DEAD. This book might have the quickest use of this trope I have ever seen. Lynn is all, “Yo, I liked Marlene IN A GAY WAY,” and then DEAD.
UNFORGIVABLE. Utterly and completely unforgivable.
My final point is two sort of jammed together. Like Divergent, Insurgent dangles a carrot in front of us, and never bothers to pull it out of the narrative. I was into the mystery of what was beyond the fence and I was interested in why certain people died to protect… a thing. My problem with how this is written is that we are constantly reminded that these mysteries are not solved. It’s not like a subtle, overarching narrative, one that we’re casually drawn towards as other shit goes down. Even when we’re dealing with the war between the factions? I felt like Roth kept going, “But what about the mystery I introduced and gave you little to no context for? Mystery!”
I suppose this wouldn’t be so bad and I wouldn’t even bother pointing it out if the resolution of that mystery MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE TO ME. As I said earlier, I was thrilled to read Insurgent because Roth spent so much time developing the other factions. We learned boatloads about the culture of each, what their headquarters were like, what history mattered in the present day, and how they felt about one another. It is absolutely one of the best qualities of this book.
So I am flabbergasted and downright confused by the end of this book because I don’t see how this is going to work at all. The reveal that this arrangement is, more or less, a planned community of sorts, that the outside world walled off Chicago (WHY CHICAGO???) to begin a new society is so fucking out there. Are we to accept that all human nature was so horrible that the whole world (or just the US???) decided to start over? Are there any people living outside the walls? Why the fuck would anyone think that forcing people into groups based on a dominant personality trait was a good thing?
Really, that’s what messes me up. The Divergent – who have spent two entire novels being the “flawed” members of this community, the ones targeted for murder, the ones who were openly discriminated against – are now… the good ones? The success stories? Because someone – we don’t know who – forced people into the world of the factions, and then they could only be let out if their aptitude tests showed them capable of more than one personality trait. Because… that makes well-rounded members of the community? I think?
Admittedly, I’m going to have to wait for all these answers, but how the hell is this going to affect someone like Tobias, whose ENTIRE FUCKING IDENTITY is built around the stigma he’s received for being Divergent? Hell, the same goes for Tris to a degree, doesn’t it? And that genuinely confuses me. Just as I’m beginning to get a grasp on the faction system, the rug is pulled out from under me, and I’m back to being confused all over again.
ANYWAY, THESE ARE MY THOUGHTS, WHAT ARE YOURS.
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