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Review: Insurgent - Veronica Roth
May. 2nd, 2012 08:37 amI must be on a book/movie/videogame general withdrawal or something. As soon as Insurgent was released, cue me taking three and a half hours out of my busy finals schedule to sit down and read it.
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Overall Verdict: It was okay.
What I liked:
As usual, Roth's writing is extremely smooth and easy to read. Insurgent has quite a bit of action in it--moreso than Divergent, whose plot could be summed up as 400 pages of Dauntless initiation training, then 100 pages of action. The Amity and Candor finally get a chance in the spotlight, and we learn quite a bit more about the world, including what it means to be Divergent. Finally, we're starting to get hints about the "dystopian" side of this dystopian series, even though the book ends on a cliffhanger after the Big Reveal. Also, a few minor characters, such as Christina and Tris's father, get fleshed out, which I really liked.
What I didn't like: (divided into two parts, spoiler-free and spoiler-full)
A big factor in how I judge books is what the book made me feel, both during the story and particularly at the end. I never felt anything while reading Insurgent. Whereas Divergent tapped something within me--this idea that someone can transcend his/her fears--Insurgent left me unable to connect. I found myself never really worried about Tris, and I wonder whether it was because I know she's going to survive, or...something else. Four was a really opaque character in the novel--a lot of his actions seemed out of the blue--and I'm not sure why, except to add romantic tension. Speaking of which, there is a whopping ton of romantic tension in the novel. Tris and Four's relationship is intensely physical. I'm a bit of a wacko when it comes to reading romance in fiction, but I thought the descriptions were excessive and borderline cheesy.
Most of the book dealt with Tris's angst about a certain event that happened at the end of Divergent, and I still can't decide whether the angst was justified or overblown.
A few "plot twists" made me scratch my head. I said that there was more action in this book, but a side effect of that was that the plot felt really fractured, in certain ways. And maybe that's my main problem with the book: it didn't feel entirely coherent. It was hard for me to figure out the theme--maybe because the cover and the epitaph pointed to different messages. The cover and tagline, with the emphasis on Amity and destruction respectively, made me anticipate that consequence would be the main theme of Insurgent and that the Amity would be the drivers of that, somehow. The epitaph, however, and I think the book in general, made me think that Candor should have been the cover (although I guess a set of scales doesn't look as awesome as a tree, or something), because the theme of the book seemed to be truth. But still, it wasn't emphasized enough for me to figure it out until after I finished the book.
More specifics in the spoiler section.
( SPOILERS )
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Overall Verdict: It was okay.
What I liked:
As usual, Roth's writing is extremely smooth and easy to read. Insurgent has quite a bit of action in it--moreso than Divergent, whose plot could be summed up as 400 pages of Dauntless initiation training, then 100 pages of action. The Amity and Candor finally get a chance in the spotlight, and we learn quite a bit more about the world, including what it means to be Divergent. Finally, we're starting to get hints about the "dystopian" side of this dystopian series, even though the book ends on a cliffhanger after the Big Reveal. Also, a few minor characters, such as Christina and Tris's father, get fleshed out, which I really liked.
What I didn't like: (divided into two parts, spoiler-free and spoiler-full)
A big factor in how I judge books is what the book made me feel, both during the story and particularly at the end. I never felt anything while reading Insurgent. Whereas Divergent tapped something within me--this idea that someone can transcend his/her fears--Insurgent left me unable to connect. I found myself never really worried about Tris, and I wonder whether it was because I know she's going to survive, or...something else. Four was a really opaque character in the novel--a lot of his actions seemed out of the blue--and I'm not sure why, except to add romantic tension. Speaking of which, there is a whopping ton of romantic tension in the novel. Tris and Four's relationship is intensely physical. I'm a bit of a wacko when it comes to reading romance in fiction, but I thought the descriptions were excessive and borderline cheesy.
Most of the book dealt with Tris's angst about a certain event that happened at the end of Divergent, and I still can't decide whether the angst was justified or overblown.
A few "plot twists" made me scratch my head. I said that there was more action in this book, but a side effect of that was that the plot felt really fractured, in certain ways. And maybe that's my main problem with the book: it didn't feel entirely coherent. It was hard for me to figure out the theme--maybe because the cover and the epitaph pointed to different messages. The cover and tagline, with the emphasis on Amity and destruction respectively, made me anticipate that consequence would be the main theme of Insurgent and that the Amity would be the drivers of that, somehow. The epitaph, however, and I think the book in general, made me think that Candor should have been the cover (although I guess a set of scales doesn't look as awesome as a tree, or something), because the theme of the book seemed to be truth. But still, it wasn't emphasized enough for me to figure it out until after I finished the book.
More specifics in the spoiler section.
( SPOILERS )
