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I feel like I was a bit hard on Divergent in my non-spoiler review, so for my spoiler-filled ramblings about it, I'm going to talk about all the things I liked about it. Just highlight the blocked text below if you don't mind being spoiled.
Tris's relationship with her mother was a real treat. I've read books with great parents, terrible parents, alright parents, dead parents, but not a lot of books have cool parents, especially not YA. And that's really the first word I can think of to describe Tris's mom: cool. Later on, she became a badass as well, but she was cool long before saving Tris's life and fighting back against the sleepwalking Divergent killers. Even though her dad had less screen time and spent a fair amount of it being angry about his children leaving the Abnegation, he redeemed himself in the end by going with Tris to the Divergent headquarters. Although I can totally understand that there had to be a lot of casualties in this book, and it made sense that her parents be included in the death toll, I am still really disappointed that they won't be in the sequels.
Another thing I liked about the book series was how it treated 'nice guy' Albert. Albert made me very cofused and sad, mostly because I knew he was never going to make the ranking into Divergent, but also because I kept going back and forth between relating to him not wanting to hurt anyone and being away from his family and realizing he was in way over his head and would probably end up factionless and having to deal with that very scary reality, and hating him for being the typical not-so-nice 'nice' guy who likes Tris but only on his terms and ends up so insecure about himself that he helps his enemies nearly kill Tris. The fact that he ends up committing suicide as well, instead of just waiting to become factionless, only added to the confusing sad feelings. I can't say I loved Albert or any part of his storyline, but I did love how it was handled, with Tris just as confused about his suicide as I was. When walking out of Albert's memorial/funeral, Tris makes an offhand insult about Albert, which she then immediately takes back. This dude overpowered her and put her in a dangerous situation where she almost died, with the intention possibly being to kill her. She has every reason to have no respect for him or goodwill towards him. And yet she takes the insult back, if only because you don't speak ill about the dead. I also totally expected Christina or Will to blame Tris for his suicide, since it happened immediately after she refused to forgive him. And yet there was no blaming! At least, no blaming that I recall, it's been a while. I realize that not forcing a victim to consider the pain of her attacker is setting the bar really low for human decency, but suicide is one of those things that is very difficult to wrap our minds around, and I could see Christina hold Albert's suicide against Tris bcause the person who deserves the responsible party is dead and sometimes it's easier to blame the living rather than the dead. The fact that no one even broached the subject of anyone but Albert being responsible for Albert's death was very reassuring to me.
I also liked how Tris was not very vulnerable throughout the book. I particularly liked how she had to act vulnerable after getting attacked so as to elicit comfort from her friends and garner some protection so people were not put off by her acting like an unfeeling robot.
I'm sure that's not all, but that's all I can think of right now and they were the main points I wanted to touch on. I've learned my lesson to not give deadlines I can't or won't keep, so let's just say I'll be back soon with another post. Next up is my book ramblings on The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Breenan.
Happy reading,
Katie
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