As Insurgent opens,
Tris and her friends are still reeling from the violence and loss that ended
book one. The city of Chicago
erupted into chaos as conflict arose between the five different factions. Now
it seems that war is the only possible outcome. Tris and each of her friends
must decide where their loyalty stands and which ideology and leader they each
agree with.
This follow-up novel is all about conflicts and choices.
Many secrets emerge that were not obvious in the seemingly peaceful world at
the beginning of Divergent. As more and
more secrets are revealed, Tris must make more choices – about who to believe,
who to follow, and what is right. Making matters worse, she is haunted by both
grief and guilt throughout this second novel, from events that occurred in book
one. Through it all, with Tobias by her side, she must also consider what it
means to be divergent.
In the final book of the trilogy, Allegiant, the action moves beyond the city’s boundaries, as
Tris and her companions venture outside the fence to learn more about their
society. In this book, the
chapters alternate between Tris and Tobias, so for the first time, we get a
glimpse into Tobias’ perspective. Conflict continues in Chicago between those
who believe in the faction-approach they know and those who believe in a
factionless society, as an all-out war seems inevitable. Outside of the fence,
Tris and the others learn a lot of surprising truths about their own family
histories, the rest of the world, and how the faction-divided society began.
The question is, what is its future?
Although I enjoyed Divergent and Insurgent, Allegiant was by far my favorite book of the series. The first two books were a
bit too violent for my taste, without any real explanation of how this unusual
society came to be. That explanation is finally revealed in book three, which
made it far more interesting for me. My favorite aspect of dystopian novels is
seeing how the author takes elements of our own society and shows how those
were taken to an extreme to end up with the dystopian society. I like the
thoughtfulness and thought-provoking nature of that kind of story, which I
finally got in Allegiant. For
me, that brought the series up closer to the level of The Hunger Games
trilogy or the Unwind series.
All in all, I am glad I stuck with it and read/listened to
the entire trilogy. The audio books were all very well done, with talented
voice actors (including two different narrators for Tris and Tobias in the
final book). I tried listening to Insurgent on audio with my family last summer, but my son and husband both lost
interest because it had been too long since we’d all read Divergent.
And that’s an important point with this series: because of the number of
characters and the complicated plot, it is best to read each book immediately
after the previous one. It’s far more enjoyable that way, and you’ll save
yourself a lot of time going back and asking, “Wait a minute, who was that?” I
am glad I finally had a chance to listen to the entire series…and now my
husband has been inspired to go back and listen to it all, too. The movie
adaptation of Divergent opens today – I
can’t wait to see it on the big screen!
HarperAudio
1 comment:
Thanks for linking up with the #smallvictoriessunday linky. I need to read the Divergent series. It reminds me of Hunger Games ( I did read). I need to read it before I see the movie (one of my personal rules). Books are always better.
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