Thursday 26 April 2012

Insurgent (Divergent, #2)Insurgent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After the awesomeness that is Divergent I was expecting so much of this...but alas, I was to be disappointed. Maybe that was the problem, I hyped it up too much.

To me this felt like a filler. A brief reprieve before the next book, where I hope, we'll get a bit more story. There wasn't really any advancement in the plot, just a lot of Tris' inner battles with herself. Self reflection isn't a bad thing, as it helps us get to know a character. Usually though, there is other stuff going on to buffer all that woe and angst and general-feeling-like-a-terrible-human-being-and-wondering-why-anyone-wants-anything-to-do-with-you-because-you-are-just-an-awful-person type stuff. It goes, action, relationship, battles-with-inner demons, revelation then rinse and repeat. In this it was just all fighting inner demons stuff. Even the relationship built up between Tris and Four felt like a shadow of it's former self and I didn't get that giddy feeling I got when I read Divergent.

Focusing now on the story, there seemed to be a lot of talk, and not a lot of action. There were no moments that left me gasping with shock. To be honest, most of the time I had trouble keeping up with what was going on. Perhaps for most people, events were sufficiently explained, but for me I'd be left scratching my head wondering what the hell the characters were on about. You'd get a piece of information, but it wouldn't be explained. It was like joining a conversation half way through but no-one bothering to fill in you on what you'd missed. I don't think I'm that stupid, but I just found it frustrating. The amount of times I'd flick back through the pages wondering if I'd missed anything. I vaguely remember feeling that way when I read the first one, but then there was so much awesome going on, it didn't really bother me. Unfortunately there were no such distractions in this one.

I am afraid to say, there was more that irked me, though much of it I can't go into detail about for fear of giving away spoilers. All I will say though is that for someone with an aptitude for Erudite, Tris was oddly willing to risk a lot for gaining information she was never actually given the details of, which to me seems illogical. Surely a smart person would want all the facts before charging off blindly, or is that just me?

There was also the authors strange habit of explaining things a number of pages later than she should, at least in my opinion. Ahhh, it's hard to explain without giving anything away. Basically something seemingly random would happen and I'd be left feeling completely confused until many pages later when we finally get the explanation. I explain it poorly, but if you've read the book and maybe get what I'm saying let me know >.< as I get the feeling most of what I'm saying may be down to me just being an idiot.

And now for the ending. I was really hoping this was going to be something epic that would wipe all my other gripes from my mind. Again, I was to be disappointed. Oh, there was a twist, but one that was very poorly executed. I think the author was going for the teaser. In not wanting to risk giving away too much and keeping up the suspense, she rather failed to really give us anything. I get a little bit of what was being insinuated, but I'm not 100% positive I've got the jist and I now get to spend the next year probably wondering what the hell it was all for, waiting for the next instalment to show itself.

Er positives...I read it reasonably quickly. If it had been really bad I would have just given up on it, though I think that was partly down to me waiting for the story to start happening and apart from the whole backwards explanation thing, her writing was still top class.

All in all, a rather unsatisfying and disappointing read. If I was sticking strictly to the Goodreads rating system, this should have got 2 stars, as for me, it was just ok, but in memory of Divergent I gave it a 3.

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2 comments:

  1. I just wanted to say that I think your review is very generous. I thought it was badly written nonsensical gibbershit of the worst kind.

    Every character has changed for no reason, the plot holes are just cringeworthy and the ending, omg the ending. I can't even...

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  2. Wow, tell me how you really feel!! But for the most part all true. The more I think about it, the crappier it becomes in my head.

    Also loving the word gibbershit!!!

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