Scan barcode
lee_hillshire's review against another edition
In which our heroes (question mark) wander around from headquarters to headquarters, and get injected with an ass ton of drugs, er -checks notes- "serums."
Also they argue a lot, and instead of talking like human beings and resolving any differences, they just make up by making out a lot more. Because that's totally healthy and not toxic at all, right?
Also they argue a lot, and instead of talking like human beings and resolving any differences, they just make up by making out a lot more. Because that's totally healthy and not toxic at all, right?
iandcredible's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
4.0
laura_corsi's review against another edition
3.0
Not as good as the first one.. But holding out hope for the 3rd!
lillinothnagel99's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
chilts01's review against another edition
4.0
Great teen fiction read- loved this series, would also recommend watching the films.
n0ize's review against another edition
5.0
Veronica is such a great story teller and I can't wait until I buy her next book for this series. Though I heard the last book has a lot unexpected events but that just makes me wanna read it even more!
remmslupin's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
erikajay's review against another edition
5.0
WOW! This book had so many twists and turns; it was an adventure the whole way through! I loved it!
Also... TOBIAS AND TRIS!!!! Gotta love them.
Also... TOBIAS AND TRIS!!!! Gotta love them.
atnea's review against another edition
2.0
Edit. 04/27/2014
I had such high hopes for this book. In Divergent, she gave us this cliffhanger about what's going to happen in Tris' worlds. And I had so much questions about it. And all I was expecting was to get some of those answers and some more action packed scenes and so much more than Divergent! Divergent gave so much potential to Insurgent. I seriously thought Insurgent was going to blew my mind more than Divergent did. But it didn't. It did the complete opposite.
I'm going to try not to spoil anybody, but give some light examples to explain why I thought Insurgent was terrible.
Starting with the fact that the first two thirds of the book were horrible. I literally had a hard time reading this, and instead of reading it in one sitting like I did with Divergent, it took me a while to get trough this. Every time I tried reading something would happen in the story that would literally persuade me to put it down. It was just so boring and horrible. And I didn't get my answers like I wanted, nor did I get my action packed scenes until the last third of the book. But I was already so annoyed with the plot that the action packed scenes made me roll my eyes. I was sitting there like "If you hadn't done this, you wouldn't have to be running for your life again".
I also felt like somehow Veronica Roth's style decreased in quality. As in, I felt like the book was written by somebody else, completely different from what my perception of Veronica's style was.
Then there's the characters. Oh. My. God. What the literal fuck. I completely hate Tris in this book. She passed to be this awesome character to this stupid bitch that I completely dislike. She was so useless and did this things that I didn't understand why. I mean, I can understand a character that does something, even thought I don't like that decision, but the reason makes sense. As in the context of who the character is, it makes sense. With Tris I didn't feel that. It was completely unnecessary.
The rest of the characters where ok, I loved Uriah and Lynn, they were good characters. With Christina I still don't like her and she also made some things that didn't make sense as well.
Then we have the plot, which felt kind of surrealistic to me. It didn't make sense to me at times. Why would this thing happen? And how did this happen? It made no sense!
I must admit that that last third of the book was pretty good, even though I was completely annoyed with the reasons of why this things where happening. I did got some of the answers I was expecting, like how does Amity, Candor or Erudite work. But it wasn't enough. I still got so much questions.
In the end, I tried to read this book again, and as you can see it took me forever. I did it with the purpose of liking the book a little bit more by catching some details I may have lost in the blindness of my anger against this book. But it only made me get angrier. And I got so mad for something that happened at the end, not going to tell you, but it just made me loose it. I can understand why she did it, though. This one did make sense in some aspects, but the selfish me really didn't want it to happen.
As it is, after I read Divergent I was expecting more from this book, but Veronica Roth was not able to give it to me. I read this the first time way before Allegiant came out, so I had to just sit there with my anger and dissapointment for this book until Allegiant came out.
If you're the kind of person who can pass trough a book without noticing the small little things that made me angry, then, go ahead and read it. It's pretty entertaining once you pass the first two thirds.
This book was definitely not for me.
If you want to read my review of Divergent
If you want to read my review of Allegiant
If you want to read my review of The Transfer
If you want to read my review of Free Four
______________________________________________________________
That's right bitches! I finished Insurgent! I will be reviewing this once I finish Allegiant (I'm starting now) and then I'll give you the reviews of all three books.
I had such high hopes for this book. In Divergent, she gave us this cliffhanger about what's going to happen in Tris' worlds. And I had so much questions about it. And all I was expecting was to get some of those answers and some more action packed scenes and so much more than Divergent! Divergent gave so much potential to Insurgent. I seriously thought Insurgent was going to blew my mind more than Divergent did. But it didn't. It did the complete opposite.
I'm going to try not to spoil anybody, but give some light examples to explain why I thought Insurgent was terrible.
Starting with the fact that the first two thirds of the book were horrible. I literally had a hard time reading this, and instead of reading it in one sitting like I did with Divergent, it took me a while to get trough this. Every time I tried reading something would happen in the story that would literally persuade me to put it down. It was just so boring and horrible. And I didn't get my answers like I wanted, nor did I get my action packed scenes until the last third of the book. But I was already so annoyed with the plot that the action packed scenes made me roll my eyes. I was sitting there like "If you hadn't done this, you wouldn't have to be running for your life again".
I also felt like somehow Veronica Roth's style decreased in quality. As in, I felt like the book was written by somebody else, completely different from what my perception of Veronica's style was.
Then there's the characters. Oh. My. God. What the literal fuck. I completely hate Tris in this book. She passed to be this awesome character to this stupid bitch that I completely dislike. She was so useless and did this things that I didn't understand why. I mean, I can understand a character that does something, even thought I don't like that decision, but the reason makes sense. As in the context of who the character is, it makes sense. With Tris I didn't feel that. It was completely unnecessary.
The rest of the characters where ok, I loved Uriah and Lynn, they were good characters. With Christina I still don't like her and she also made some things that didn't make sense as well.
Then we have the plot, which felt kind of surrealistic to me. It didn't make sense to me at times. Why would this thing happen? And how did this happen? It made no sense!
I must admit that that last third of the book was pretty good, even though I was completely annoyed with the reasons of why this things where happening. I did got some of the answers I was expecting, like how does Amity, Candor or Erudite work. But it wasn't enough. I still got so much questions.
In the end, I tried to read this book again, and as you can see it took me forever. I did it with the purpose of liking the book a little bit more by catching some details I may have lost in the blindness of my anger against this book. But it only made me get angrier. And I got so mad for something that happened at the end, not going to tell you, but it just made me loose it. I can understand why she did it, though. This one did make sense in some aspects, but the selfish me really didn't want it to happen.
As it is, after I read Divergent I was expecting more from this book, but Veronica Roth was not able to give it to me. I read this the first time way before Allegiant came out, so I had to just sit there with my anger and dissapointment for this book until Allegiant came out.
If you're the kind of person who can pass trough a book without noticing the small little things that made me angry, then, go ahead and read it. It's pretty entertaining once you pass the first two thirds.
This book was definitely not for me.
If you want to read my review of Divergent
If you want to read my review of Allegiant
If you want to read my review of The Transfer
If you want to read my review of Free Four
______________________________________________________________
That's right bitches! I finished Insurgent! I will be reviewing this once I finish Allegiant (I'm starting now) and then I'll give you the reviews of all three books.
bookph1le's review against another edition
2.0
I can't help but feel like, for all the Erudite factor into this book, the end result was very illogical. Full review to come once I've marinated on this book a bit.
Full review:
Oh, Insurgent. How you've disappointed me. While I didn't much care for Dauntless in the first book, I did like how it examined the idea of a society divided into factions based on a person's nature. It was an intriguing concept and it really allowed for a lot of room for Roth to explore and make some insightful commentary on human nature. Which she did do. Four's stance on the Dauntless made me want to cheer. He was clearly someone who got it, and the ending of Divergent made me eager to find out what would happen when the insight spread. Alas, it did not spread. Spoilers to follow.
First off, I just want to rant about Dauntless. Though I thought all of the factions in this book exhibited very questionable judgement, Dauntless fails on all counts. I can buy that some of them were loyal to Eric and thought the Erudite plan was nifty. Fine. But, people, they used mind control on you! I simply cannot buy the idea that more of the Dauntless wouldn't have defected, especially since it seems to me that this kind of control should be contrary to their very nature. Yet, no matter what happens to them throughout the course of Insurgent, the Dauntless insist on being impractical to the point of lacking a sense of self-preservation. This really drove me straight up the wall. They came across as exactly what Four/Tobias more or less said they were: a bunch of adrenaline junkies who can't manage to squeeze two brain cells together in order to have a rational thought. And Tris is really no exception.
As for Tris, I really liked her and really sympathized with her in Divergent. I could understand wanting to break free of a constrictive role, wanting to embrace a more exciting way of life. In this book, she simply seems to have a death wish. For all the Tris is supposed to be Divergent, she is blindly Dauntless for the vast majority of this book. She never really stops to question her actions and decide if the choices she's making are really good ones. What's more, she keeps things from Tobias and then gets angry when he has a problem with it. I get that you're afraid he'll judge you and cast you aside, I get that you're angry that he's keeping things from you, but how can you expect him to be up front when you refuse to be honest? I'm not excusing Tobias's actions, because I really thought he treated Tris like an infant for a good portion of the book, but it's like she expected him to adhere to a higher standard than she adhered to herself. That's not cool. Why, then, is she surprised when he won't really listen to what she has to say, and when he questions her judgement?
The whole nature of their relationship in this book was annoying to me. What do these two people like about one another? The attraction was clear and made sense in Divergent, here it doesn't. It almost feels like they're together because that's where they plot left them, not because they really want to be together. This is not an equitable relationship: neither party is honest with the other and they both adamantly refuse to talk through their problems. As much as I liked Tobias in Divergent, I didn't much like him here, though I was more sympathetic to him than I was to Tris. By the end of the book, Tris just seemed like a self-destructing idiot.
I also really disliked the characterizations of the other factions. Amity's passivity is totally inexplicable, as is Candor's. We're talking about a situation where two factions teamed up and slaughtered all but a handful of people from another faction and Candor and Amity don't see any reason to be concerned? I get that Roth was maybe making a statement about human nature here and, while I do get people tend to sink into denial rather than face danger, people also have a sense of self-preservation that is remarkably lacking here. The other thing I could not get past was the question of what good is Candor? The other factions all had a purpose, but Candor seemed completely superfluous, which ruined me belief in the world Roth has created.
Lastly, I was extremely uncomfortable with the treatment of the factionless, and I hope this is something that's going to be further developed in the last book. It made me shake my head to think that the factions couldn't grasp the fact that the people they exploited and condemned to a life of mere subsistence might choose to rise up against them. Gee, how unexpected!
All in all, this book felt like so much filler. I had the sense that I was on a world tour of the Divergent/Insurgent universe, and that didn't do the book any favors. Tris and Tobias bounce from one place to another with no real purpose, and it isn't until the end of the book that a key plot point is revealed. I do want to finish the series because of that plot point, but it was too late in Insurgent for it to save the book for me. Honestly, I suspect that, when all is said and done, Insurgent could be cut out completely and the real meat of the story could be told solely in Divergent and the third book.
Full review:
Oh, Insurgent. How you've disappointed me. While I didn't much care for Dauntless in the first book, I did like how it examined the idea of a society divided into factions based on a person's nature. It was an intriguing concept and it really allowed for a lot of room for Roth to explore and make some insightful commentary on human nature. Which she did do. Four's stance on the Dauntless made me want to cheer. He was clearly someone who got it, and the ending of Divergent made me eager to find out what would happen when the insight spread. Alas, it did not spread. Spoilers to follow.
First off, I just want to rant about Dauntless. Though I thought all of the factions in this book exhibited very questionable judgement, Dauntless fails on all counts. I can buy that some of them were loyal to Eric and thought the Erudite plan was nifty. Fine. But, people, they used mind control on you! I simply cannot buy the idea that more of the Dauntless wouldn't have defected, especially since it seems to me that this kind of control should be contrary to their very nature. Yet, no matter what happens to them throughout the course of Insurgent, the Dauntless insist on being impractical to the point of lacking a sense of self-preservation. This really drove me straight up the wall. They came across as exactly what Four/Tobias more or less said they were: a bunch of adrenaline junkies who can't manage to squeeze two brain cells together in order to have a rational thought. And Tris is really no exception.
As for Tris, I really liked her and really sympathized with her in Divergent. I could understand wanting to break free of a constrictive role, wanting to embrace a more exciting way of life. In this book, she simply seems to have a death wish. For all the Tris is supposed to be Divergent, she is blindly Dauntless for the vast majority of this book. She never really stops to question her actions and decide if the choices she's making are really good ones. What's more, she keeps things from Tobias and then gets angry when he has a problem with it. I get that you're afraid he'll judge you and cast you aside, I get that you're angry that he's keeping things from you, but how can you expect him to be up front when you refuse to be honest? I'm not excusing Tobias's actions, because I really thought he treated Tris like an infant for a good portion of the book, but it's like she expected him to adhere to a higher standard than she adhered to herself. That's not cool. Why, then, is she surprised when he won't really listen to what she has to say, and when he questions her judgement?
The whole nature of their relationship in this book was annoying to me. What do these two people like about one another? The attraction was clear and made sense in Divergent, here it doesn't. It almost feels like they're together because that's where they plot left them, not because they really want to be together. This is not an equitable relationship: neither party is honest with the other and they both adamantly refuse to talk through their problems. As much as I liked Tobias in Divergent, I didn't much like him here, though I was more sympathetic to him than I was to Tris. By the end of the book, Tris just seemed like a self-destructing idiot.
I also really disliked the characterizations of the other factions. Amity's passivity is totally inexplicable, as is Candor's. We're talking about a situation where two factions teamed up and slaughtered all but a handful of people from another faction and Candor and Amity don't see any reason to be concerned? I get that Roth was maybe making a statement about human nature here and, while I do get people tend to sink into denial rather than face danger, people also have a sense of self-preservation that is remarkably lacking here. The other thing I could not get past was the question of what good is Candor? The other factions all had a purpose, but Candor seemed completely superfluous, which ruined me belief in the world Roth has created.
Lastly, I was extremely uncomfortable with the treatment of the factionless, and I hope this is something that's going to be further developed in the last book. It made me shake my head to think that the factions couldn't grasp the fact that the people they exploited and condemned to a life of mere subsistence might choose to rise up against them. Gee, how unexpected!
All in all, this book felt like so much filler. I had the sense that I was on a world tour of the Divergent/Insurgent universe, and that didn't do the book any favors. Tris and Tobias bounce from one place to another with no real purpose, and it isn't until the end of the book that a key plot point is revealed. I do want to finish the series because of that plot point, but it was too late in Insurgent for it to save the book for me. Honestly, I suspect that, when all is said and done, Insurgent could be cut out completely and the real meat of the story could be told solely in Divergent and the third book.