I WAKE WITH his name in my mouth.
Will.
Before I open my eyes, I watch him crumple to the pavement again.
Dead.
My doing.

Well, at least she remembers it’s completely and utterly her fault.

Tris ended last book on, if not a high note, a more outwardly facing one. Now she’s turning inward as everything that happened sinks in. Tobias is still focused on escape, though. He has not yet tried to kill his dad. I really don’t know why they’re so invested in not letting him die.

I was reading this horror manga and it wasn’t particularly good (formulaic AND porny) but one thing I did like was what happened when they found someone who claimed it was their fault. The kids were trying to rescue this woman by lifting the wall off of her. She says the attacker is her husband and she failed to do her duty in killing him before he could They drop the wall, crushing her.

It’s horrible that they did that. More than that, it’s stupid, because she might have been able to give them some idea of how to stop the zombie things or at least protect themselves. But it was the sort of stupid, horrible thing people might actually do.

The middle chapters of last book started to get into people being less than perfect, but as we sped toward the end, that got shoved aside for plot. Not once has she thought to herself that it wouldn’t be that bad if someone just shot Marcus. Not once did she consider putting him on point in their suicide run. Either she’s refusing to acknowledge his very existence to the point she forgets he’s here, or she decided keeping him alive for Tobias to work through his issues and maybe kill him himself was more important than her own dad living, and even after her dad did in fact die, she still has no issue with Marcus being the survivor.

Anyway, they’re near the fence now and jump off the train, continuing to run from………explaining what happened to the rank and file Dauntless?

I hear him sniff like he’s fending off tears, and I have to turn away.

Why can’t she see her brother crying? It might be Dauntless not to show emotion, but she should know he’s not held to that standard. Erudite shouldn’t have any issue with emotion, especially given how the groups generally seem to divy up traits weirdly and it’s either everybody but one or nobody but one, and we know both Amity and Candor must be okay with emotions. Maybe Abnegation thinks you shouldn’t show emotion because it’s making things all about you, but that’d mean she still hasn’t shaken her Abnegation upbringing, and everything else says she has.

The fence towers over us, too high and flexible to climb over, too sturdy to knock down.

Eh, there’s five of you, three of you are supposed to be soldiers and I think Tobias is still uninjured. If the fence is so bendy you end up upsidedown or something, the other people can probably hook the top and drag it the rest of the way down.

“There are supposed to be Dauntless guards here,” says Marcus. “Where are they?”

Why does it matter? The rank and file Dauntless have nothing against you guys, and if they want to desert their posts and not get in your way, who cares? You’re on a flat plain, it’s not like you have to worry about ambush.

Tobias recaps the simulation and chaos thing, and Tris recaps they don’t know the details because they ran off for some still unexplained reason. Also, we’re reminded she has a hard drive of I guess the simulation? Don’t remember. I’m leery of this after comments about the series getting really retconny. I can’t imagine a way this should matter much based on what we saw last book.

Of course, a locked gate doesn’t mean anything much to the faction that locks the gate.

“How did you know that?” says Caleb. His voice sounds thick with emotion, so thick I am surprised it does not choke him on the way out.
“I worked in the Dauntless control room, monitoring the security system. We only change the codes twice a year,” Tobias says.
“How lucky,” says Caleb. He gives Tobias a wary look.
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Tobias says. “I only worked there because I wanted to make sure I could get out.”

….or it could require extensive explanation instead? We were told last book that gate-guarding was not exactly a prestigious post, so it’s hard to believe it’s particularly secret information among the Dauntless.

Tris only just realizes as he says this that yeah, the giant gates are kind of keeping them trapped. Given she knows the fence as the thing to keep bad stuff out, that makes sense. But she doesn’t continue thinking on it – does he mean get out as in away from the people killing divergents which, according to the sidestory, he knew he was? Does he mean get away from the city in general? Does he just mean, very literally, he wants to know how to get out simply for the sake of it, as could make sense for someone whose greatest fears include claustrophobia?

If you’ve only just now realized that the fence could be taken to be trapping you, it’s relevant to wonder what the other person’s worried about. It could just be a personal quirk of Tobias’, it could be a concern that’s no longer relevant, or it could be some huge issue she just wasn’t aware of, like the whole divergent business itself.

Tris informs us that her brother is indeed crying.

but I don’t know how to comfort him, or why I am not crying myself.

Second one’s not too hard, because you’re Dauntless and he’s not. First one should be a gimmie – last book you admitted you knew what you were supposed to do and just didn’t want to do it. Here could be similar. You might lack the energy for it (especially reasonable under the circumstances when Caleb has gone through so much less than Tris, and is currently uninjured) or feel you’re better off sticking to your Dauntless role of protecting the group than dealing with him, or just finding the Abnegation comfort even more disconnected from your own feelings than before and not sure you could do it justice.

Anyway, they reach Amity.

The sharp, sweet smell of rotting apples mixes with the scent of wet earth in my nose.

This is not a well-run place, it seems.

I wonder if this is because in modern times, the most likely experience with apples is pick-your-own setups, which tend to be full of abandoned apples with one bite in them, and even ones run more as actual farms often have most trouble finding people to actually do the labor part. But there seem to be plenty of Amity members, and they apparently rope in Abnegation whenever they need extra workers. Why is no one collecting the fallen apples before they rot? There’s plenty of ways to process them, including the standby of apple farms, apple cider. You can also feed them to the animals being kept – particularly useful as fall usually means the regular forage is slowing down its growth.

(Also, hey, we know the time! Different apples ripen at different times, but they’re a fall crop. Tris joined the Dauntless quite some time ago, which means all that stuff about the brown marsh was in late summer and proves that it must be a lifeless stretch of mud. This would also fit with the fact there’s been no concern about cold weather yet.)

Marcus takes charge saying he knows where to go, which initially seemed suspicious but then I remembered he’s supposed to be dealing with the other groups, as that was originally Tobias’ reason for not being a leader at Dauntless.

All the buildings except the greenhouses are made of the same dark wood, unpainted, rough.

Bullshit. That’s Abnegation. Amity has been established as being bright colors and being the only official artist faction. Their buildings would be covered in murals. Remember which hat goes with which faction, book!

Apparently Amity doesn’t lock their doors or anything and Tris says that only Amity would be so trusting, so I guess that confirms Abnegation is a gated community to keep out to factionless.

Marcus makes a beeline for the representative of Amity, which reminds me that we still don’t know what the difference between leader and representative is. A big point was made that Erudite was weird for only having one based on who won the smart-off, which would suggest the rest have multiple, but now it seems like Amity has only one too. Do they have multiple leaders but one representative, and Erudite is weird for only having a single leader?

is hard to forget Johanna’s face, whether you’ve seen her once or a thousand times. A scar stretches in a thick line from just above her right eyebrow to her lip, rendering her blind in one eye and giving her a lisp when she talks.

That’s incredibly interesting and yet you give no further explanation. Instead, we have her really happy Marcus isn’t dead, unclear if this is a general goodwill for humanity or that Marcus is good at making people love him. She also says “your party” got there – so, what’s up with the rest of Abnegation Tris rescued by turning the simulation off?

“Oh my,” she says, her eyes lingering on the blood soaking Peter’s shirt. “I’ll send for a doctor. I can grant you all permission to stay the night, but tomorrow, our community must decide together. And”—she eyes Tobias and me—“they will likely not be enthusiastic about a Dauntless presence in our compound.

Isn’t Peter also Dauntless? For that matter, he’s their prisoner, which seems like it might be relevant information assuming anyone knows what’s up.

They’re told to surrender their weapons to stay, but Tobias has her keep her hidden gun.

I know it’s smart to keep one of our guns. But it would have been a relief to hand it over.

Be more Dauntless, Tris. At the least, if you’re upset by keeping a gun that has been a major component of your survival this far, you should be making a big internal production of upset you are about your murder of Will and the other innocent Dauntless and how that’s made you question your otherwise sincere love of weaponry.

“My name is Johanna Reyes,” she says, extending her hand to me, and then Tobias. A Dauntless greeting. I am impressed by her awareness of the customs of other factions. I always forget how considerate the Amity are until I see it for myself.

So…the huggy love people respect everyone’s customs, but the selflessness ones impose their system on others?

Tobias then introduces himself as Four, as if no one in his father’s circle recognizes him that way.

Off they go for healing, which, naturally enough, involves Erudite medicine because Erudite continues to be the most useful faction, then they get a sleepytime drink which presumably the Erudite also invented.