Ahhhhhhh. New laptop. On with the resolution! Since I did Divergent last week, I decided to follow up with Veronica Roth’s Insurgent this week. This book is number two of three. Beware there likely be movie spoilers below. Yar.

Here we find protagonist Tris on the run from Erudite with Four (which I believe we now know as Tobias), Marcus Eaton, Peter (Erudite born Dauntless asshole) and her brother Caleb. They high tail it the Amity compound outside the city to regroup. They don’t end up staying long, as they attract trouble.

Knowing they would need help, Tris, Tobias and Caleb end up running from the Amity compound when some Erudite sympathizers come looking for them. They head for the Candor headquarters where they are arrested. From the footage that Erudite released, it looked like they were in charge of the whole bloody mess at the end of Divergent.

In order to prove their innocence, they undergo a truth serum. It forces them to admit their secrets, which proves they didn’t plan or run the Erudite campaign. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there and it puts a strain on not only Tris and Tobias’ budding relationship but Tris and her friend Christina as well.

The Erudite attack Candor not long after, injecting a bunch of people with a new long lasting serum. Tobias and the new Dauntless leaders decide they are no safer in Candor than they are back at Dauntless headquarters, so off they go back home. Meanwhile, it takes them a while but Tris and Tobias figure out that this serum allows Jeanine, the Erudite leader, to control people not only at a distance, but for a longer period of time. Jeanine promises to not do anything to those who are injected with the serum if the Divergent give themselves up.

The Dauntless Divergent are pretty much “no fucking way”. Except Tris. Tris leaves in the middle of the night and gives herself up to Erudite for testing. Naturally Tobias needs to come after her and the two of them are essentially tortured by Jeanine. We learn that Peter made it back to Erudite but to everyone’s surprise, Caleb turns out to be an Erudite sympathizer. He helped capture his sister.

And I’m going to end here since any more will give away the end of the book and the movie. So, I was a little more frustrated by Tris in this book than I was in Divergent. She has this self-sacrificing thing going for her that a lot of protagonists do but she doesn’t just think any of it through. If she just talked with someone, come up with a plan, trusted the people she claimed to trust, she might have been able to do more when she turned herself in. As it was, it was sheer luck that allowed her to (SPOILER) survive the situation.

Still, fairly solid book. I was interested enough to buy the final book in the trilogy Allegiant. Worth a read. Rating: B