Insurgent (Divergent, #2)

by Veronica Roth

[clementine]

I liked Divergent a lot. The concept was very neat; I thought it was well-plotted; the characters were pretty cool, although certainly lacking some amount of depth. The writing itself wasn't stellar, but it was a highly enjoyable read made especially impressive by Roth's age.

Insurgent, on the other hand, I was quite disappointed with. I felt like it was rushed, which it probably was given that it was published quite soon after Divergent. This is understandable, since the market changes quickly and everyone just wants to make a quick buck and whatnot - but it was also pretty noticeable. The writing quality was pretty bad; it distracted me quite a bit from the actual text. I feel like a lot of readers wouldn't notice it because the plot was still exciting, but I am picky and I did notice. It's not that I was expecting the style to be mindblowingly beautiful, but somehow it irritated me quite a lot this time around, and that's the main thing that made me feel like it was rushed. It's of course reminiscent of The Hunger Games in terms of narration style in the sense that it's first person, present tense, and fast paced, but somehow the immediacy of it is lost here.

The plot felt like a natural continuation of Divergent, which is good. However, it definitely didn't feel as tight as Divergent. There seemed to be a lot of jumping around, and things just didn't come together as well as they did in Divergent. Overall I thought the plot was good, but it was definitely lacking something, and it was a bit of letdown after the very exciting and creative Divergent. I would still overall call it a pretty successful plot, though.

The characters irritated me a lot this time around. I just couldn't really get a feeling for who they really are. This could be a conscious choice on Roth's part, but it made it really hard to connect with the characters and actually care about what happened to them. I know Tris is suffering from PTSD or something similar, but I felt like she spent a lot of time whining and not being proactive. There's definitely a fine line there, but I've seen characters with something like PTSD written in a way that still keeps them sympathetic and interesting. As for Tobias... ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I'm generally wary of romance in these types of novels, because I feel like it's usually forced, and the male character almost always fits a really specific archetype that I despise, and the romance aspect of this series really went downhill with this book. Tobias just seemed so out of touch with Tris, and right when I thought she'd finally stood up to him and this WASN'T going to be a formulaic and-they-defeat-the-oppressive-powers-and-get-married-and-have-babies ending (which we still have yet to see, of course), she takes him back for no real reason after voicing VERY legitimate concerns that are never resolved.

I'd really like to see the divisions between the factions explored more. They seem very reductive, and while I know a lot of that is the author's intent (showing how we need to work together to succeed as a society rather than dividing up based on one trait; ignoring shared traits and goals in favour of differences), a lot of the characters within the different factions seemed to be merely undeveloped archetypes. I would love to see this expanded upon, because right now it's walking the line between "I see what you're doing and it's cool" and "I don't know if this is intentional". It has promise, though, and the loose ends make me think a lot of it will be revealed/built upon in the next book.

A lot of stuff did come together at the end, and it made me enjoy significantly more. There were quite a few things bugging me throughout the book, and a lot of these concerns were somewhat addressed by the end. I do think Veronica Roth left room for a very promising third book. I'm certainly not going to expect it to be as good as the first, nor will I expect much from the writing style, but I think the story will be good. I hate to make this comparison again (and I'm certainly not trying to suggest plagiarism or anything), but so far the series seems to follow a Hunger Games-style arc: a close, focused look at one aspect of society followed by a wider look at the society and the beginnings of a revolution followed by (most likely) the revolution succeeding. It will be interesting to see more of the society, as well as what's outside and why exactly they were put inside.

Seriously, I still like this series, despite this rather long and negative review. Insurgent was disappointing to me, but not unsalvageable by any means.