In the aftermath of the Erudite’s co-option of the
Dauntless and attack on Abnegation, Tris and Four leave the city and try to
rally their forces against the Erudite’s brutal campaign. But what can Candor
and Amity do against the Erudite’s technology and the Dauntless training? What
can the Dauntless do when split against itself and at risk from the Erudite’s
mind control?
Forces have to be rallied in the most unlikely of places,
all the while dealing with the fallout of so much loss – and the terrible
things Tris has had to do. And under it all is a creeping worry of what they
will do – is it right to destroy the Erudite? Can society survive without them?
Can it survive if the Erudite win? How can they win a war that seems to have no
good outcomes?
In some ways this book continues and confirms my opinion
of the world building from Divergent.
The faction system is broken, it doesn’t make much sense, it’s not workable,
not a useful tool for creating peace let alone one for creating a society that
works. That’s not bad world building on the part of the author, that’s what we’re
supposed to be seeing – this whole book, even more than Divergent is about showing the flaws of the system, the flaws of
each faction and it inevitably breaking down.
Like we see the Amity faction which looks so peaceful and
beautiful – and then realise it achieves this by constantly drugging everyone (which
is actually an ongoing habit of the whole world – these ridiculous factions are
held together with regular doping to avoid any common sense) and, of course,
the flaw of Amity being so conflict averse is that their response to evil abuse
is to put their hands over their ears and pretend it’s not happening. We see
Candor’s honesty is truly merciless with no accounting for people’s pain or
experiences – it’s also deeply and utterly impractical in any meaningful away. We see the factionless in their great numbers –
there simply because of the deeply unjust system they operate on; not just the
choosing. We’ve seen the Dauntless cruelty, but now see their ableism in
discarding anyone who doesn’t fit their physical ideals – and the Erudite in
their treatment of anyone who doesn’t match up to their intellectual standards
The factions only last because of constant drugging and a
developed knee jerk hatred about every other faction so they constantly support
their own without question for fear of being seen as disloyal or “unpatriotic.”
Any attempt at thinking clearly and sensibly is clearly Erudite sympathies, any
attempt to seek peace is cowardly Amity-ness etc etc. This system designed for
peace only lasts because of the created conflict within each faction. Yet this
conflict will inevitably lead to the war.
This is the underpinning feature of this series – this society
is broken and that’s not bad writing, it’s the world itself.
I also appreciate that an effort was made to reverse the
overwhelming condemnation of the Erudite and a final acknowledgement that their
society would collapse without them – that without the technology the Erudite
provide then no-one else would be able to live.
There are elements I do consider terrible world building –
like Candor and Dauntless being pretty much useless society. Candor doesn’t
seem to provide any valued service to the other factions (and if they do they
needed to emphasise that more – especially since Divergent suggested they were the legal class) and Dauntless exists
to protect them without actually any indication of what they’re protecting them
from. Instead they’re a lot of weapon toting adrenaline junkies who could pull
off a coup at any time because they’re the only faction who can fight.
I also have problems with the ending which I’m going to
try and not spoil. But I can see why the Divergent, with their mental
flexibility, adaptability and even empathy are a way forward for peace. I cannot
see how the people-who-made-this-plan-who-will-remain-nameless expected the
thing-they-created to be a good vehicle for achieving anything. It’s a little
like someone saying “we need Divergent for peace! So we will throw cottage
cheese at cats.” I can see the first part, I’m not quite sure what the second
part has to do with anything. This doesn’t help that the ending is just plain
awful anyway – this is the big secret? This is the secret worth starting a war
over? This is what people were willing to die to defend?
There’s also some decent character development I liked (and some I didn’t). While Tris did spend a lot of this book moping, it was a pretty acceptable mope. She’d just lost most of her family (albeit she doesn’t actually spend that much time grieving for them) and she’s just been forced to kill someone who was a friend. I’m glad this had a lasting effect on her – I’m glad we do see trauma and this isn’t seen as weakness, it’s seen as a natural result of being traumatised
There’s also the conflict of being Divergent which I
think is fairly well done. After all, Tris has aptitudes for 3 different
factions – in a world where any deviation is regarded with suspicion at best
and the prime way to show loyalty to your faction is to show contempt for the
others and their traits. How can she embrace her natural curiosity when she
loathes the Erudite so much? Is finding courage through selflessness a betrayal
of her Dauntless faction ideals?
There’s a fair amount of good there. And then there’s the
bad – Four. Not that Four is inherently a bad character per se, but Four and
Tris’s romance is annoying, contrived, takes up a vast amount of space and is
completely and utterly unnecessary to this book. We have a story here. We have
a story in an interesting world with lots of epic battling against a broken
society with lots of character growth and personal conflict. And all of it
takes a back seat because of Four and Tris’s romance which we seem to spend a
vast amount of really pointless time on – and it adds nothing to the story. Worse,
it has a bad case of “second book romance” – you know when the first book is
all “will they won’t they” (or, more likely, “when will they?”) and then it
ends with them together? Well then you have a second book and you need to
continue this story so – RANDOM CONFLICT HAPPENS. I see this in so many books with
a heavy romance plot, they get together
in the first book and then contrived reasons drive them apart in the second
book so there can still be some convoluted conflict in the story.
Tris and Four spend most of this book mad at each other,
reconciling, falling out, arguing, pouting, keeping secrets, being sulky about
those secrets, throwing around double standards like they’re going out of
fashion and generally making me want to give them both a good slapping with
fresh haddock. Half the time I didn’t even know why Tris was mad at Four and I
really didn’t care.
Get this romance out of the damn way! I’m trying to read
the story and all I have is Tris and Four hissing at each other, the Dauntless
deciding Four went from their greatest hero to uber-awful and more drama about
Four’s parental issues than about the whole society collapsing. Do not need it.
Do not care about it. It tarnished what could have been a very good book
because for at least half of it I was tempted to skip ahead until everyone
stopped mooning over love interests and got back into actual relevant plot.
This also destroyed any pretence of action or pacing in the book because we
dragged along following Tris mope and make ridiculous decisions as proof of her
epic angsting sadness rather than actually DOING anything
I have to mention that decision making. I get that Tris is traumatised. But this book tries to simultaneously emphasise Tris's Erudite nature while, at the same time, have her make decisions that a concussed mongoose would consider dubious. Everyone is asking Tris to analyse a situation while she is merrily leaping into impossibly dangerous situations without a single clue as to how they will turn out or benefit her. I guess no amount of Erudite intelligence make up for the epic foolishness of Dauntless and Abnegation
On to the inclusion. We do have a large number of
background POC in every faction. Every time there is a groups of POC of any
group around, some of them will be expressly described as POC. Of the main
characters, Christina is a Black woman and she’s somewhat involved… but it’s
only really somewhat. The flip side is I’m not sure how involved anyone beyond
Tris and Four – I can’t say there’s anyone else in the book who stands out as
more involved than Christina. There are a mind numbingly huge number of names
though so I could be thinking 1 random person are 2 different random people.
Which is another problem. There are eleventygazillion people in this book. Lauren, Marlene, Will, Peter, Zeke, Cara – who are these people? I don’t know, I’m not sure I care, I can’t quite connect them to anything. I was reading for quite some time with them talking about Caleb before I remembered that Caleb was Tris’s brother. I completely forgot who Marcus was and I took me a while to remember the hint about Cara. And we had a shout back to Al and…. SO MANY PEOPLE! Bob died? YAY… or. NO… or… am I sad he’s dead? I have no idea who Bob is
One character is revealed as loving another woman (who is
already dead) seconds before she dies.
Don’t even try to sell me this as inclusion: “Oh I loved Dead Girl, not
as a friend because I’m a les…COUGH SPLUTTER DEATH” is not inclusion.
So I conclude – damn it go away pointless romance! Go away! Honestly, this would be 4 fangs without that romance, maybe 4.5. Instead the urge to beat people with fish has eclipsed any enjoyment I would have got from this book. Awesome setting, excellent plot idea, it all held together well and then it was splattered with a convoluted love conflict that would have been annoying in any circumstances and was positively enraging when it distracted from such an excellent revolution dystopian story
