This second installment after Veronica Roth's page-turning debut, Divergent, continues at a breakneck pace with even more twists and turns.
Picking up where Divergent left off, Insurgent follows Tris, Tobias, Marcus (Tobias's father), Peter and Caleb (Tris's brother) as they travel by train to the Amity faction. Readers must begin with Divergent in order to understand narrator Tris's inner struggle as she confronts her grief and guilt over the fallout from Erudite's usurping of the Dauntless faction. Jeanine Matthews, leader of Erudite, would wipe out nearly the entire Abnegation faction to protect something. But what?
Tris and Tobias travel among the factions to drum up support against Jeanine and her master plan. Then they learn that the plan somehow hinges on Divergents, and the greatest number of them live among the factionless--those with no faction to call home. To Tris's surprise, she discovers that the factionless "are together, like a faction." Their leader proposes "a different kind of society. One without factions." Tris finds this hard to imagine: "A world in which no one knows who they are or where they fit" even as she discovers facets of herself--and others--that do not fall neatly into categories. And she must choose between her instincts about Marcus as honest and Tobias's view of him as a liar: "Cruelty does not make a person dishonest," Tris realizes, "the same way bravery does not make a person kind."
Roth's novel will keep teens guessing to the very last page and hungry for the trilogy's conclusion. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness