Eh, this was... fine, I guess? Just like "Divergent", this book benefits from taking place almost entirely in Dauntless headquarters. It benefits from not having to go through the other factions and show how ridiculous and non-sensical this world is. It's confined to a small location, and it can be easy to forget about how none of this world makes much sense when the reader is almost entirely focused on Dauntless initiation and life.

It was somewhat interesting learning about Tobias's early days in Dauntless and how he transformed from a timid Abnegation nobody to an intimidating Dauntless leader in such a short period of time. It was also interesting seeing him reconcile his various identities and goals as he started assimilating into Dauntless life and figuring out its various secrets.

However, at the end of the day, I still don't see much of a point for this book existing. When it comes to prequels for the Divergent franchise, I would have much rather read about the early days of genetic damage, the Purity war, and the forming of the factions. That would have provided so much more information about this extremely shallow world than whatever this is. Dude, the last 100 pages of this book actually contain the exact same events that we read in Book 1, with the only difference being that they're from Tobias's point-of-view rather than Tris's. Was this really necessary?

In the end, I'm excited to say that I'm done with this franchise. Despite re-reading it a couple of times over the years, it's never really affected me in the way that the Hunger Games franchise has. I don't think it's awful in any way, but I'm honestly kind of glad to say that I don't have any intention of revisiting it in the future ever again. ( )

I loved reading from Four's perspective and getting more of his backstory. It was interesting seeing how his initiation went and how things started to change to how they were when Tris came in. I love seeing more of Zeke and Shauna, I love their characters especially when they were threatening Peter. This was a great companion to the series and I really liked seeing Four's POV. ( )

Love Four ( )

In this story, I really do prefer Four's point of view to Tris's. Nice that this gave a little more insight to Eric and some of the other machinations going on in the city. ( )

I liked it! I kinda wish I saw more of his side of things with Tris, but I enjoyed the stories of before she was a part of the world story. I just wish there was more! ( )