With The Sixth Faction release in the past week, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to finally do a full reread of the Divergent series. I’ve reread Divergent a few years back, but I didn’t pick up Insurgent or Allegiant. So for a decade, what I know about those books is just what they aren’t compared to the movies. And that has to change. This is a series so close to my heart. The first one I ever read. The first book I ever truly fell in love with. Until then, I had no idea how much someone could enjoy a novel. This is an important book series. Their story should be on the tip of my tongue, and it’s a crime it’s not.
Divergent
Do I really need another review of Divergent? This is the book that I’ve read already 3 times, and every time I do it, I have the same reaction: this is so much more violent than I remember. The violence in this story always surprised me. I always imagine it to be more PG, the characters to be more contained and calm. Meanwhile, Tris is awakening her dark side and ready to fight with everyone. It’s a huge contrast with her Abnegation-born values and what she’s being taught in Dauntless training.
One of the most fond memories I have of Divergent is Tris and Tobias first kiss. That scene is so good. And it doesn’t matter how many times I read it. I still feel the butterflies in my stomach. It’s intimate and, at the same time, the perfect blend of who they were, where they come from, and where they are now. The Dauntless are part of the scene. Their new faction. It’s the blend of the dangerous with the security of each other’s arms. A kiss with an iconic view to mark the start of their story.
From everything that happens in the first book, I never seem to forget their first kiss, even when the rest of my memory is flooded with images from the movie. This is one of the saddest parts that I realised while doing my reread. I can remember scenes. I can even visualise them. I’m sitting reading and waiting for them to show up, only to realise that I was actually remembering the movie and not the book. And this was a constant experience with all the books. And I’m left wondering if this can be a testament to how forgettable some parts of the story can be, or if it’s just how my brain works. And since it has a clear picture to remember (from the movies), it favours that over creating imagined ones from the books.
One thing I’ll always do thanks to this book is call Four by his real name, Tobias. It’s actually one of the things that saddens me that they changed in the movie because Tris calling him by his real name is actually something very impactful. He’s the one who prefers that she use his real name instead of his nickname. Like she’s knowing the real him. It carries a lot of symbolism and is a great starting point to evaluate their relationship. She’s special to him. She knows the real him. He doesn’t hide from her. So she gets to use his real name. Because of it, I also prefer to use the name Tobias. It makes me feel closer to the character even though there are so many jokes around that name in Portugal that I can’t take it seriously.
Insurgent
Ten years ago I read this book for the first time. And one thing that I remember was thinking it was slower and not as good as the first one. I don’t know what that girl was talking about because this is good. While Divergent focuses heavily on presenting how the Dauntless initiation works and starts to build Tris and Tobias’ relationship, in Insurgent the focus is not so much on the plot. There is always a plan or something happening in the background, so it’s not a static story. But the focus is on deconstructing the characters.
Tris is stuck in loops of thinking about what happened at the end of Divergent. Thinking of Will, of her mother and father. She’s not well. She’s like in a boat rocking from side to side. Grappling with thoughts about what to do, what to feel, how to stop, while the tide carries the boat at its will. She tries to steer the boat from time to time, but her debilitated state of mind is always very present.
While Tris is being deconstructed to find out exactly what motivates her, who she is, instead of the Dauntless they created, Tobias is stuck in the past. Stuck in the person he always was, the person Tris was, and that creates a rift between them. He doesn’t fully know or understand what Tris is going through, so they keep moving away from each other. They don’t know how to connect with each other anymore while Tris is going through this transformation, trying to find herself.
I guess at the time I first read it, I was very much new to the reading world, so my preference was a plot-focused story, and Insurgent was too character-focused for me. However, since then that has changed, and I enjoyed Insurgent as much as I enjoyed Divergent. It did feel repetitive how Tris kept having the same thoughts over and over again. Although that’s also a reflection of her state of mind. And we could see the world around her keep moving at the fast pace it always does while her mind was moving slowly.
Since this is only my second time reading Insurgent, I had no idea how it ended. I only remembered the movie version and knew that was very technologically advanced for this story, but I couldn’t remember anything. So it was like reading it for the first time again. Which made it a really nice experience. I could be surprised, be reintroduced to characters I forgot existed, and enjoy the high stakes without really knowing what was going to happen next.
I keep referencing the movies because that’s something I realised was happening. Memories I thought came from the books were actually from the movies, and so I had a constant expectation to read a scene that would never come. It made me a little sad that, firstly, I wasn’t fully immersed in the story. I was thinking ahead instead of enjoying the now, and secondly, that a story that I hold so dear isn’t how I remember it. I think I need to make a habit of rereading Divergent every year so that I can swap my movie memories with the book ones.
Allegiant
It’s actually quite interesting how, as a reader, I kind of feel the same way that Tris does in this book. This is a strange moment in the story. Everything that came before suddenly feels like a dream. The “real” world is so different from what we are used to. And as a reader, I feel that strangeness as well. The story I read in Divergent and Insurgent seems to be miles away. A completely different story, another book entirely.
Also, we have for the first time Tobias POV. They do have some differences in their voices, but I don’t think the distinction between the two is very evident. Maybe because they are both from Abnegation, both chose Dauntless, and both are divergent. Their similarities might actually make it harder to distinguish between the two voices. And I mean this by looking at the writing, not the context. Because the context of the conversation or the scene easily identifies which character we are following.
Tobias is one very complex character that I don’t think was well executed. This is the first book we are inside his mind. And that means all his complexity needs to be well developed. Tris is a very strong-willed and assured character. She had 2 books to reach that point. Tobias is the opposite. While strong, he’s also fragile, and that disparity doesn’t come across in his chapters. His actions make more sense seen through the eyes of Tris than they do from his POV. His upbringing has a tremendous impact on who he is and how he acts, although his decisions seem to come out of whims instead of being rooted in his past, which they are. And Tris sees that so easily, but we don’t see it inside his mind.
Actually, comparing all three books, Allegiant is actually to me the weakest of the group. Since the story does a 180-degree turn and everything we learned is shifting, it’s almost reintroducing the world once again. Because of that, the story develops slowly. While Insurgent spent a lot of time inside Tris’ head, in the background, the plot was still happening. Meanwhile in here, the plot also took a back sit. So, a lot of the time spent in Allegiant, nothing is really happening. The characters are trying to understand the new world they see around them, learning new things, but that’s it for a long time.
As it happened with Insurgent, I didn’t remember much of the plot in this book. Although I never forgot how it felt to read the ending the first time. I was sitting on my bed, opening my eyes wide to try and read between the tears that kept distorting my vision. I didn’t want to stop reading, or the story would stop. I needed to continue even if the stupid tears wouldn’t allow me to see straight. I never cried like that before, or did it ever happen again with other books. Until this one made me cry all over again. If the first time I cried for Tobias, this time I cried for Tris. When I closed the book, I realised I didn’t want to be inside that world anymore. Not if she wasn’t in it. Ten years had gone by since I first read this book, and in a decade I realised that so much has changed. So much since that day crying in my bed reading the final chapters of Allegiant. And because of it, the final sentences became my breaking point. All my emotions spilt out. I was a wreck.
A book that can bring out such an emotional reaction can’t be anything other than 5 stars. Even if the path there was bumpy or needed some work. An author who can make you feel is a good one. Despite the strong impact I wasn’t expecting, I didn’t want the ending to exist in any other way. It’s heartbreaking. It’s not necessary, but it’s also not bad. She accomplished what she wanted, and it’s the connection to the character that makes the ending even more impactful. And if Tris knew how it would end, she would do it exactly the same way.
Reading The Sixth Faction now will be complicated. I’m not ready to get back into this world after having my heart shattered. Although I can’t wait for the next time I reread this series and see how else it will impact me. I expected to have a mild reaction to Allegiant, and yet it was even worse than the first time. How would it be to read it a third time? How will my life be then? I’ll just hope it won’t take me another decade to find out.
