When we last left our main girl, the Divergent Tris, she was escaping a mind controlled Dauntless slaughter. Tris along with fellow Divergent, and current eternal love Tobias (also known as Four), his abusive and squirlley father Marcus, her Abnegation turned Erudite turned whatever brother Caleb and a couple of others make it to the Amity compound. There they are welcome with if not exactly open arms, they are at least fed and clothed and given a bed. Turns out that Tris is suffering from a bit of post traumatic stress syndrome from killing her friend and watching her parents die, this manifests itself in an inability to use a gun and a bit of a suicidal bent. This of course sets Tobias off in some sort of anger pattern, instead of trying to understand and help his girlfriend, he spends most of his time giving her non-helpful ultimatums about bucking up and getting over it. Stuff happens and Tris overhears a conversation about some sort of mysterious information that Abnegation was trying to get out to the general public, but along came Janine (the Erudite leader who orchestrated the whole violent overthrow) who decided that the information should not be given out. After a bit of an altercation, Tris is "punished" by being given a serum that makes her super peaceful and it is
revealed that everybody in Amity (probably unkowingly) eats a bread that is infused with this peaceful serum. Amity holds a meeting and decides that they depend to much on Erudite to piss them off so they refuse to take sides. Dauntless/Erudite storm the Amity compound and the group makes a run for it. The group makes it back to the city and find themselves with a group of factionless led by non other then Tobias's mother...yep not dead...though her story is a little sketchy. She either ran away and abandoned Tobias, or was exiled by Abnegation, or something. They find out that there is a high percentage of Divergents within the factionless and that they are understandably unhappy with the way things are run. They leave the factionless and end up with Candor where more serum is given, in the form of a truth serum where everybody has to spill their guts about stuff that has nothing to do with anything in order to partake of the safe haven within Candor. Tris admits she killed Will (even though she had no choice) and Tobias admits his dad beat him on a regular basis. Tobias is pissed that Tris kept a secret from him, but refuses to own up when Tris calls him out on his own secret keeping. Tris and Tobias hook up with some of their Dauntless buddies before once again the traitor Dauntless/Erudite once again storm a compound. This time they only kill random Divergent, everybody else gets a dart that injects a transmitter into their system, once again turning the non-Divergent into potential mindless soldiers. Somewhere in here Tris decides to turn herself in to Janine for further testing so that Janine will quit killing people. During her captivity Tris discovers that her brother is a traitor and has always been on Janine's side. Tobias tries to come to her rescue but it takes an old enemy Peter to actually get them to escape. Tobias, Tori and some other guy are elected Dauntless leaders after all the other leaders are either killed, captured or turned traitor and decide to ally themselves with the factionless to storm the
Erudite compound and destroy all of their computers and gathered knowledge in an attempt to stop what ever it is they are trying to do. Tris agrees to go with Tobias, but secretly makes plans with Marcus and a few others to try and retrieve whatever information it is her parents died for. More chaos, more angst, more shooting. Tris ends up in the security portion of Janine's secret lab and runs into another simulation...kind of. She makes it to the inner sanctum only to find Tori holding Janine at gunpoint. Tris tries to make Tori understand that they can't kill Janine until they get the info from her computer, but Tori doesn't listen and kills Janine. Tobias comes in and agrees with Tori that Tris is a traitor (that was a lot of T's in that sentence), but Tris again calls him out on his bull headedness, reminding him that he is the one who said he loved her for her, and that the first time it was tested he bailed. Tris is taken captaive, but Tobias actually listened and got Caleb to help him get the info they were looking for. Meanwhile the factionless showed just how dumb everybody else is by getting all of their weapons, meaning to take over. Before...or during...or after this happens the screens flick on and a video plays, showing images of violence and death and then a women saying something about locking everybody in the city to refind their humanity...but the problem was human nature...but the solution was the Divergents who were the epitome of human nature...and the Divergents should be set loose on the rest of the world to help them. And that my friends was the end of book two.
As you have probably guessed this was not my favorite book. So very many issues, so very few answers, but lets start with the good stuff so you know I actually read it with an open mind :-) I think my favorite parts were any time Christina was on the page, she is by far my favorite character and seems to be the one who has the most realistic head on her shoulders. She was pissed at Tris when she found out about Will, she eventually forgave Tris, but it took some time and not all at once, when faced with facts she thinks about them and makes her own decisions about things, and she is pretty funny. I loved it when Tris called out Tobias on all his double standard stupidness, especially at the end, I wanted to jump up and cheer. I also appreciated how Tris was affected by all the death, not only of her loved ones, but the ones that she killed. It goes so against her upbringing and she has had so little time to adapt to the Dauntless way of life that this seemed an appropriate reaction. Also I love the tree on the cover of this book. See there was a little bit of good stuff. Now on to my issues. My biggest issue is the same one I had in the first book, how the heck am I supposed to believe that humans only display one trait. How am I supposed to believe anything the author says when she contradicts herself on the basic premise of the books. We are told that Divergent's are
Divergent because they display more then one trait...but we are shown over and over and over confirmed non-Divergent's who regularly display more then one trait. On that same line of thinking, any transfer would have to be Divergent by definition because they were raised in a different trait, but nobody suspects truth telling Christina of being Divergent...but Tris is because she knows how to be selfless?! Makes no sense. Does this mean any time anybody tells the truth that isn't in Candor they are automatically Divergent? How many times does one have to hold open the door for another person in a faction not belonging to Abnegation before they are hunted down? How does one distinguish between peace loving Amity and selfless Abnegation as many of the defining features are similar? The factionless pose another interesting angle to this whole Divergent business as it appears that most of them could be considered Divergent, now I will give the author some credit for saying that there is a high percentage of Dauntless in the factionless. That leads me to the ending of this book, I was warned that this is not most peoples favorite book, but the bombshell at the end is worth it. I did not think the ending was all that spectacular, I had suspected from the beginning that their was a reason behind the locked fence with nobody knowing what was outside it, so not really a bombshell. The idea that this little experiment was because humans were too violent...well...we already are. I thought it was funny that as the images of violence were flashing on the screen all I could think about was that is exactly what was happening inside the city, so no progress there. I did not get what the experiment was, or what it was supposed to do, I was
feeling of the nonsensical frustration I got when I was reading The Maze Runner series where the premise was just because and did not serve any real purpose. The video stated that the Divergent's were supposed to have flexible minds, which to me means the people who were part of the experiment were drugged or something into strict factions (which may be backed up by all the serums that were used in this book) and that when people developed a resistance and became normal then they were ready to...do what I don't know. If the whole reason that the world got uncontrollably violent was human nature...then why do they want people who have proven to be the definition of human nature to be their saviors? I don't get it. Ok enough kvetching, I obviously have problems with the premise and a lot of the cool world building and Tris's development that I made the first book readable and almost enjoyable were very much missing in this book. I have heard rumor that the next book is much better...I sure hope so. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments. I give this book 5 out of 10 serums.
What did you think of this book? What type of serum do you think we need to use on a regular basis? What is the deal with second books? Does anybody know Candor's function in this society?
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