This is a four star book but I’m giving it an extra .25, because I can now! And because I was so into this when it’s been so hard for me lately to really be into and finish new books.
I let my curiosity get the better of me with this one. I was really into Divergent when it was first published, and then the second two books devolved into something very disappointing, which at the time made me angry, but I just don’t think Roth was a very good writer at the time, looking back! She was too fresh, too much of a precocious young person, to really know how to structure a story, character arcs, use themes, you know, things books are made of. I’m glad she had this do-over, even if it does ultimately end up where the first trilogy ended.
Speaking of, this is only going to be a duology, which is smart, because the original trilogy didn’t need to be a trilogy, it was a lot of waffling around pointlessly, so I’m happy that she’s getting straight to the ending here. I also think she has learned a lot about story structure and worldbuilding in the last fifteen years. The worldbuilding in the original story, let’s be honest, was absolutely terrible. Made no sense, aggressively vague, came off as just super dumb. And because she was asking us for such a huge amount of trust for the ending but hadn’t earned it, the results were not great, Bob.
I’m not going to get my hopes up for this duology’s finale, but I definitely don’t think it will be a disaster anymore.
As for this book’s project itself, I do think it was really interesting to see what she kept and what she changed from the original go-round. I don’t think this book would have been as much of a page-turner without the familiarity and then subsequent time away from the original, but I would be interested to see what a person had to say about this who hadn’t read Divergent back in the day.
Anyway, the curiosity didn’t kill the cat this time. I wish her luck! And she has officially been removed from my shit list.
CBR BINGO: Craft (this book would have been a failure without an improvement in her craft of writing)
