Insurgent carries on the story that Veronica Roth started with Divergent. It’s a story in which once well-established factions that defined who you would become as a person have disbanded and the lines between these differing peoples is blurring as secrets come out about the people much higher up and the fact that the world may not be all it seems.
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Insurgent, of course, carries on from Divergent, so if you haven’t read my Divergent review, I’d recommend jumping on over to that before reading this. Essentially Tris, our main character, was found to be a Divergent which meant she didn’t really belong to any of the factions after a test was taken of her. Divergents are feared as they can’t really be controlled by the government and this makes them fear them and banish them. However, Tris wasn’t the only Divergent and Insurgent leads on to show us there are many more like her than she thought.
Insurgent plot – 3/5
Not going to lie, not a lot really happens in Insurgent that’s worth noting. The final few chapters are where all of the real action is and these few chapters alone are the only reason I’m giving the plot three stars out of five. You see, Insurgent falls into an easy trap – it was clear that Veronica Roth wanted to make this a trilogy when she saw the success of Divergent, however, she also knew where she wanted the series to end up and what she wanted the big reveal to be. But this results in this book feeling very much like a filler to the final book in the trilogy.
In Insurgent, Tris argues with some people, makes up with some people, calls some people some names and that’s really all that happens. I mean, this is a bit of an over-exaggeration, there are some moments where Tris goes up against the big bad enemy, resulting in one or two important deaths but other than the final third of the book, it’s mainly just a massive filler.
Insurgent characters – 3/5
Again, I felt like the characters in Insurgent were a huge snooze fest. You’ve got a few of the classic tropes when it comes to YA – young attractive male who is calm, cool and collected is the love interest but he has the same personality as a blunt pencil and then some others who add a bit of excitement to proceedings with odd choices, rash actions and some questionable one-liners. But all-in-all, this isn’t anything along the lines of We Begin At The End or To Kill A Mockingbird, two books that I think highlight how to do characters perfectly.
In the first book, Divergent, I noted how I was surprised at how much I ended up thinking the characters in the book actually had a bit of something different about them. However, this is kind of gone here. Tris is far too often either angry, crying or worrying about what Four (Tobias) is thinking or doing. I get there’s a need to weave in a love story (because it’s YA I suppose) but this could have been made to be far more interesting.
Insurgent summary – 3/5
There’s a huge missed opportunity here with Insurgent. We’ve seen with a lot of other books that sequels can be everything the first book was but with the solid foundation you can build on the world and toy with the established characters, introducing new ones. Insurgent tries this and fails. No one new is particularly interesting, there are far too many bang average interactions and only the last third of the book had me interested in continuing with the third and final book.
I always find book reviews really helpful and tend to seek them out before I buy a book. It doesn’t seem like this one was the one for you! Shame that it didn’t live up to the expectations.
Yes, same! It’s all great the cover being nice and the synopsis sounding great but reviews will tell you whether it has all the other right pieces too!