Insurgent (Book Review)

Insurgent expands the world first introduced in Divergent. Tris learns that the world she knows is much more complicated than she ever expected.

Insurgent (2015)

Title: Insurgent

Series: Divergent

Director: Robert Schwentke

Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Theo James

Released: 2015

The Top 3 Book Things That Would've Made Insurgent a Better Movie

I'm not one of those people that likes telling people "it's explained better in the book" and the complimentary "just read the book and you'll understand". I'm also not one of those people that get pissed off just because something isn't included in the movie adaptation.

So why am I bringing this up? The movie adaptation of Insurgent (based on the book written by Veronica Roth) tries to do its own thing which has the side effect of shooting itself in the foot.

Below, with minimal use of spoilers, I'll list my top three things that won't just make Insurgent a better adaptation but a better movie overall.

Sayings Sundays (March 16, 2014)

The Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth is a very well done series. Even though I don't like Allegiant as much as the other ones, that one takes a huge risk and I applaud it. Though I did guess the certain event that would most likely happen half-way through the book so I wasn't as broken like I was by the ending of Mockingjay or Cujo.

Throughout the trilogy there are many twists and turns. Good guys become bad and bad guys gain some humanity that they didn't before.

The society is broken into different factions that are based on values that each faction believes are the way to achieve peace.

The Candor believe in complete and total honesty. They believe that one lie is just as bad as any other.

Tris learns some haunting things in Insurgent so it's no wonder why she'd question the positives of knowing the truth.

I watch the show Pretty Little Liars and looked up this song because of it. I won't say how many times I've listened to it so you can continue to believe I'm someone you can trust.

The upbeat tone to the song is great and Ingrid Michaelson has a very nice voice.

The image I chose to use is of my ultimate OTP: Science Husbands (aka a sexual/romantic relationship between Bruce Banner and Tony Stark)!

I chose the first line in the graphic because both Tony and Bruce have things that they are ashamed of but shouldn't be. Bruce's thing is the other guy (aka the Hulk) harming people when Bruce can't control him. Tony's thing, among other things, is the whole incident in how he started to build the Iron Man suit including a guy sacrificing his life for him.

Both have become more than their faults and each wants to remind the other of that fact.

Insurgent (Veronica Roth)

Title: Insurgent

Series: The Divergent Trilogy

Author: Veronica Roth

Released: 2012

Rating: 5/5

Basic Plot: Chicago is now at the brink of war. Tris must now do what is right while figuring out who is friend and who is foe.
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Bigger and Better
I will just say 'wow'. Divergent (first book in the trilogy) was awesome but was the first part and, therefore, the setup. Everything expands from the first book here. Tobias/Four's relationship with Tris is explored with many ups and downs (great thing about this, no love triangle in sight!). The reasoning behind Jeanine Matthews' (the leader of the Erudite) plans to mind control the people of Chicago is explained (which made me more understanding of why she did what she did, though still not thinking of her as a good character). Plus there are good characters that turn out to be traitors and bad characters that end up doing good things.

Many Plot Twists
There are many points in this novel where there are plot twists. I won't mention any names here for the sake of keeping this spoiler free as possible. I will say that one made me feel like I was in extreme pain. The reason behind this was because I didn't think the character had it in him/her to do it. Truthfully, I don't think I'll ever get over what that character did and might do in the sequel (which hasn't been officially named yet, I believe). Another plot twist (where it is revealed a character isn't straight) didn't make any impact on me. It didn't really do much for the story.

The Growth of Tris
Tris is recovering from the events of Divergent as more painful events happen in this novel. How she reacts to the grief is sometimes annoying to me. The main thing is when she can't fire a gun (for the majority of the novel). I know Veronica Roth was trying to be realistic but it was still annoying to see a strong female character not being able to fire a gun. That being said, I am proud of her for pursuing truth so she doesn't mess up.

Final Thoughts
Holy flying penguins! This book was just awesome. I read this over 500 page book in two days (the large print, simple words, and shape of the book did help) and I would've read it quicker if I didn't have anything important to do. The twist at this ending will leave you breathless and craving for the final part of the trilogy. I won't mention the twist here (might make a post about it in another post, though) due to it being probably the biggest thing in the trilogy yet far. How big? It will change everything you think you know about the Divergent Universe. Yeah, that big. And I can't wait for it to be fully explained in the final part of this series.