Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm slightly above the young adult age (around twenty five years plus), so consider my opinion taking that into account. You may ask why I read YA books then. Why not? I'm curious.

I enjoyed Insurgent. And I didn't.

The setting is quite compelling, the basic idea is really interesting. How could a society work if people are divided into factions based on their mental attitude? And I arrived to the first point I have problem with. I'm not a sociologist nor psychologist, but I'm sure it cannot work. Humans are not black and white. Humans are not of four clear colour, they cannot be put into boxes. It just doesn't work like that. The idea of creating a society based on this is born dead. But it still could be interesting to see how things can develop in a scenario like this, so I suspended my disbelief and I wanted to know, you know, "what if". It reminded me of religious cults suppressing general truths worshipping only one (often false one). I continued listening (to the audio version) as it was an experiment on one possible way to solve the society's serious issues. I put my doubts aside and flowed with the story, and I did enjoy it more. By the end of the book I learned that this environment didn't evolve, but it was established artificially. That helps a little to believe the scenario. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In the factions individuals start to pup up as divergents, (of course they do, if they didn't the story wouldn't exist), and this society cannot handle them. They blend in pretending having one aptitude or get hunted because they cannot fit in the system. That creates a lot of tension, and gives the floor for the action.

The action moved the story forward, and kept me listening. I really liked the action scenes, those were the best parts of the book. Unfortunately in between there were scenes when the heroin agonized over exaggerated dilemmas. Maybe I've a very simple personality, maybe it was too long time ago when I was teenager, maybe being a man I cannot understand the girls (who can? :) ). Maybe Tris had mental issues. But some of the whining should have been cut out.

I would have enjoyed more world-building. There were some explanations about the supporting equipment like power supply, but I missed some technicalities how they could sustain the supporting services. It was a closed environment after all.

By the way, can somebody tell me who drove the train? People died, factions fought each other, but that damn train still run no matter what.

As I mentioned I'm not in YA age anymore, that may explain my disbelief concerning the hands off love between Four and Tris. At the age of 16-19 teenagers are much more interested in the hands on stuff of sex. It was annoying how the circumstances (or their fears or anger) "accidentally" stopped Four and Tris to get into it more deeply. I don't say there should be explicit sex scenes, not at all. But their love would have been more believable if there were scenes like "Four pulled Tris' shirt off, kissed her on the mouth and... Cut.... Tris smiled at Four and nested herself in his arms with satisfaction". Like in an old movie ;)

The character of Tris is well drawn, we get to know her deepest secrets and fears. She had a special power, she could resist the simulation. Awesome. She is mentally off balance in my opinion, but I gather that was the author's intention. But it didn't help to like her that she made stupid decisions. I mean stupid. For example when she joined Marcus. She loved Four, she knew that Four hates Marcus, she didn't trust Marcus, and didn't have evidence that it was true what he was saying, but she went with him instead of being and fighting on Four's side.

I'm sure my daughter enjoyed the book more, because she already told me she hardly can wait for the third one to come out. She is at the right age, I suppose.

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