I was so very excited for this book to come out and find out the end of the world and the characters Veronica Roth created with Divergent.
This is the first book in the trilogy that is written from two perspectives; Tris' and Tobias'. I loved reading from Tobias' point of view because, as I've said many times before, he is the fictional love of my life, also I really love knowing his thoughts on his family and what they've put him through. I know most fans really disliked the ending, but I thought it was very true to the characters because when I think of Tris I think of when she used to say "I am selfless, I am brave" and those are the characteristics she was showing when she did it. I was kind of disappointed as I really love reading the story because it is set in the world of factions and although I know it was neccessary for them to leave that society to further the plot and end the story I didn't really enjoy them living in the real world for half the book. My favourite characters in this book were Tris and Caleb. Although I already loved Tris, this book made me really admire her as a heroine and see her as a role model (considering I already know that the movies are going to be a big hit). I still don't understand Caleb's previous actions, but I really enjoyed watching his character growth through this book and his relationship with Tris change. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes dystopian novels, or wants a really creative world to escape into.
The book starts with Tobias telling his mother that he broke up with Tris even though he's lying just to gain her trust. He then gets Tris, Christina and Cara's charges taken off them and they are free to roam in the new factionless regime Evelyn is enforcing. They then get tapped to go to a meeting of the Allegiant - the uprising that wants what was told to them in Edith Prior's video, factions back and divergent to leave. A small group of them then leave the city together with Tori being shot by one of the factionless in the process. Once they make it out of the city they are picked up by some people who explain they are from the Bureau of Gentic Welfare and that they were part of one of their most successful experiments after what is known as the Purity War. The Purity War started after the Bureau started fixing genes that had bad traits, low intelligence, cowardice, dishonesty, agression and selfishness, however it showed that removing those traits took away other traits like compassion, motivation, assertiveness and self preservation. This then split the population into two groups, those who were "genetically pure" and those who were "gentically damaged", it caused a massive war and the Bureau then took most of the "gentically damaged" and put them into other societies like theirs so they could eventually breed out the damaged genes. The divergent are the genetically pure, however after some tests it is shown that Tobias isn't actually genetically pure, he merely could resist the simulations. Tris doesn't care about that but it clouds Tobias' judgement and he helps some GDs he meets with a terrible plan to take down the bureau and their bias againt GDs (who he discovers are being treated basically like animals) and part of that plan was to have explosions throughout the department as diversions, however one of them ends up putting Uriah into a coma. Tris then comes up with a better plan after the Bureau tell her that they are going to reset everyone in the experiments memories as they are about to kill each other with the war brewing between the factionless and the allegiant. She decides that they should reset everyone in the Bureau's memories so they won't be biased against the GDs and Tobias must go back into the city to reset one of his parent's memories so they won't have a war. Whoever has to release the memory serum into the Bureau has to die because the room is armed to release death serum if you break into it, at first Caleb volunteered to do this job, but at the last minute Tris does it instead of him and although she manages to resist the death serum, David, the manager of the Bureau shoots her and she dies, but she manages to release the memory serum first. Evelyn then agrees to stop fighting the Allegiant if Tobias will allow her back into his life which he does and they work out a treaty where Chicago is the first city free of bias against GDs.
