Two years before Beatrice Prior made her choice, the sixteen-year-old son of Abnegations faction leader did the same. Tobiass transfer to Dauntless is a chance to begin again. Here, he will not be called the name his parents gave him. Here, he will not let fear turn him into a cowering child.

Genre: 

Young Adult, Dystopian

Pages: 

285

Part of a Series?:

This is a companion novel to the Divergent trilogy

Release Date: 

June 8th, 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

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GoodReads Summary: 

Two years before Beatrice Prior made her choice, the sixteen-year-old son of Abnegation’s faction leader did the same. Tobias’s transfer to Dauntless is a chance to begin again. Here, he will not be called the name his parents gave him. Here, he will not let fear turn him into a cowering child.

Newly christened “Four,” he discovers during initiation that he will succeed in Dauntless. Initiation is only the beginning, though; Four must claim his place in the Dauntless hierarchy. His decisions will affect future initiates as well as uncover secrets that could threaten his own future—and the future of the entire faction system.

Two years later, Four is poised to take action, but the course is still unclear. The first new initiate who jumps into the net might change all that. With her, the way to righting their world might become clear. With her, it might become possible to be Tobias once again.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth comes a companion volume to the worldwide bestselling divergent series, told from the per-spective of the immensely popular character Tobias. The four pieces included here—The Transfer, The Initiate, The Son, and The Traitor—plus three additional exclusive scenes, give readers an electrifying glimpse into the history and heart of Tobias, and set the stage for the epic saga of the Divergent trilogy.

My Review:

I’m going to be upfront and honest: I hate novellas. Most of the time I just think they’re a way for publishers to capitalize on a built in book series and they’re usually not worth my time. I usually try to stay away from them.

But this is Veronica Roth. She is one of my favorite authors. Divergent means the world to me. I have a Divergent tattoo because of what it means to me. And Four is easily my favorite character. What he says about fear and being fearless and brave throughout the entire series really gets to me. I have an obsession with fear and the idea of being fearless. So Four is awesome. When I heard there would be these four short stories telling Four’s point of view, I knew I had to read it.

The Transfer, The Initiate and The Son all take place before Divergent, before Tris even comes into Four’s life. I love these so much. Veronica Roth has said that she began writing Divergent in the point of view of Four before changing that to Tris. Because of that, I think these stories have more integrity, more background, more strength than other novellas. Other novellas seem to be written randomly so they aren’t so well thought out or in conjunction with the story. Everything that happens to Four in these three stories works so well with what we know in the Divergent trilogy and that’s what I love about them. They make a really great prequel to the rest of the series. It explains more about Four, and you really get a background of him. You see what he went through in trying to escape his father in Abnegation, what his life was like during Dauntless initiation and why he chose to be an instructor when he ranked the highest. I really enjoyed that.

The last story in the book was The Traitor. This takes places during Divergent. We get parts that we already saw, interactions with Tris from Four’s point of view but we also see new scenes that were going on at the same time. Divergent is easily my favorite of the entire series so I loved this one the best probably. I liked seeing scenes from Four’s point of view and I liked seeing what he was up to when he was “off page”. There was so much to this particular story and I could not get enough of it. What Four was aware of with Jeanine and Erudite and Dauntless and the attack on Abnegation and what he was hoping to do and accomplish. I love it. I love it so much. It was really awesome to see these different stories on the background of my favorite character.

There is also three additional scenes at the back of the book, short scenes from Divergent that tend to be fan favorites, and they are told from Four’s point of view. We get when Tris first jumps (“First Jumper, Tris”), when Four and Tris first eat a meal together (“Be Careful, Tris”) and Four is drunk and talks to Tris (“You Look Good, Tris”). These are all scenes that I love between Tris and Four so of course I got a little fangirl kick out of reading them from Four’s POV.

As a Divergent fan, I would say this book is a must. Its a short read, only 285 pages, and I cleared the entire thing in an hour and a half. We get to see some of our favorite moments from Divergent in the point of view of an integral but very mysterious character and we get to see the background that makes Four such a complex character. It adds new information but keeps to the story that we know and love. I say, a must buy!

Rating:

5 out of 5 Stars