Four Review

“How is it possible to live the same story twice from different vantage points?” Four asks himself when he talks to Tris after her first fear simulation, and it is fascinating how similar Tobias and Tris’ upbringings are, encouraging a connection that will come to change their lives admist the revolution.

This collection by Veronica Roth reveals that she originally centered the trilogy around Tobias but the voice wasn’t working until she found Tris, and relegated Four to an intriguing supporting character. These four novellas (plus three bonus scenes) give insight to Four’s past and his mindset leading up to the events in Divergent.

The first story, The Transfer, takes a look at a bit of what his life was like in Abnegation. Most importantly, what it was like under the cruel hand of Marcus. While, Abnegation is still the selfless faction Tris had depicted, Tobias is very separate from it all due to his father’s abuse. He kept himself invisible not to draw his father’re ire or mess with Marcus’ reputation, leaving him with those secret scars and bone-deep loneliness amplified by the loss of his mother.

The isolation and desperation to escape is the bulk of his mindset, but there is also fear as he makes that last minute decision to choose Dauntless. It was engaging to see all of what made Tobias the man he becomes plus forshadowing major elements in future books. Readers will also enjoy seeing Tobias gain his new name, and reading how he overcomes his fearscape for the first time. I was just a bit disappointed with how much time Roth spent building up fear simulations in the series and spent a good amount of time immersing the characters/readers in it, that Tobias’ time in the fearscape is painted in broad strokes, and feels too short.

The second story, The Initiate delves into how the original initiation and the manifesto the Dauntless followed before we meet them in Tris’ story two years later. The changes brought on by Max and Eric really did transform the tone of faction and readers get to see the beginning of that corruption. There’s also a nice amount of fleshing out characters like Shauna, Zeke and Amar that were off to the side during Tris’ book, the people who helped to welcome Four in even as he realizes the true thing separating him from the rest of the group. It’s not that he’s still a coward, unable to get over his fear of Marcus. No, it’s realizing that he’s Divergent which throws his word into a new murky shade of gray.

The third story, The Son, fully realizes the corruption of Dauntless when Max picks Four for leadership training. Readers get to see the internal mechanics of Dauntless and how they set up jobs, training and their values for leadership. It ups the suspense since readers know where things are heading from here alongside a more personally-charged rivalry between Tobias and Eric. This is my favorite novella as we get to see how Tobias’ morals and point of view of the factions. He will not put “faction before blood” because he sees how that blinds people and make them pawns. He wants to be a person.

The final novella, The Traitor is set during Divergent. It’s not a repeat of scenes we’ve already seen from Four’s point of view but connects with the novel as it shows what Tobias has been doing behind the scenes to uncover the conspiracy between Jeanine, Eric and Max and what they’re doing to the divergents and the Dauntless. Also for those shippers, readers get to see how Four feels a kinship to Tris, understanding her conflicts as she’s trust into this new brutal world. But the most important piece of this novella is Tobias’ internal battle when he realizes that to do the right thing he’ll be betraying the faction he was born in or the faction that is his new home.

The last bit are what I call the Tris scenes which are short, only ten pages, showing his first sight of Tris, lunch with her and the incident where he calls her pretty while drunk. They don’t offer much insight or anything new but for those who like the pair, I suppose they’ll appreciate the extra.

For those who want to return to the Divergent world, or more accurately, get to know one of the more complex and well-rounded characters of the world, then they’ll highly enjoy this collection of Four stories.