Insurgent by Veronica Roth is a science-fiction novel that follows the story of a girl named Tris who has just escaped from the evil plan of the Erudite to overthrow the faction system. Tris, along with her friends Tobias and Susan and her brother Caleb have to work together in order to prevent their civilization as they know it from falling into chaos. The book is set in the distant future in a post-apocalyptic society that has been divided into factions in order to maintain peace and has been cut off from the outside world. Within the futuristic society the factions Abnegation and Erudite have had a long-standing conflict between each other and Tris is caught between the two when Erudite makes the first move and attacks.
I am reading this book because after reading the first novel in the series Divergent, I was left on the edge of my seat leading up to the end of the book and wanted to pick up where I had left off by reading Insurgent. So far, some of the weaknesses that I have seen in the book is that the plot started off very slow in contrast to how the last book ended and that I feel that Tris is becoming more of a supporting character rather than the most important. Some of the strengths, however, are the continued action and constant conflict throughout the book with some nicely added plot twists which tie characters that had been left behind in the first book back into the plot of this one. I feel that the recommendation given to me was fairly accurate by saying that the book starts up pretty slow, but after a while gets better.
I feel that anyone who liked books such as those in the Hunger Games series would enjoy these books because they both have somewhat of a similar dystopian world and have strong female leading characters who share similar traits. This book is similar to the first book in the series but i feel like now that people understand the backstory of the faction system and no longer have to introduce the theme and characters, the author is free to throw in any number of plot twists and life-changing events than in the first book. Overall, I give this book a thumbs-up because even though it was initially a slow read, the book has slowly gotten better and almost to the point where I could say that it was as good as the first book in the series.