America spends the remainder of the fight locked in the safe room.

I cannot tell you how utterly unsurprised I am at this turn of events.  Of course the ‘climax’ of the series would simply be America sitting in a dark room, thinking about romance, preparing to be badass but never actually doing so.  She cuts her dress at the knees in what I’m sure is a classic ‘badass princess’ design, so she’s all ready if a fight happens, but that’s as far as she gets.  That’s as far as anything in this book ever gets.  Looking like action, and then nothing else.

The guards come to let her out after the fighting, accompanied…oddly enough by Gavril, the TV show announcer guy.

Though his suit was practically destroyed, his pin—which I now realized looked an awful lot like a North Star—still hung proudly on his bloody lapel.

Yeah, you keep popping up with all these eleventh hour rebels, but it just looks like a bunch of ass covering and hand waving to me.  What have any of these rebels actually done?  Hell, what has August, the supposed leader, done?  Told Maxon to marry the girl he already wants to marry anyway?  Wow, big fat lot of difference that made.

You are the most useless rebels I have ever heard of, fictional or otherwise.

No wonder the Northern rebels knew so much.

…what have they known that’s so surprising?  They’ve barely told us anything.

Why would Gavril explain unexplained knowledge?  He’s a talk show host.  Does his job have a wider scope than just looking pretty on camera?  Because you forgot to mention that.

America starts going into shock and then wakes up in the hospital area.  She asks someone if Maxon is there, and when he says no, she assumes it’s because he’s dead.  I mean, it’s not like he’s royalty and probably wouldn’t be housed in an overcrowded clinic or something.

She does find Aspen, though, and they have…what, the fourth conversation so far about how they’re not in love anymore?  I guess in all the chaos, they just forgot that this is old news.

Then Aspen tells her that Maxon is alive, just not around all the plebes, obviously.  But the king and queen died.

Aspen says the North Star rebels were a great help in fighting off PALs, but I’d like to call bullshit on that.  Just a couple weeks ago they were so untrained they were begging for help, and all their tactics before now consisted of sneaking and running and searching, so how did they get better than the trained palace–

Oh, wait, I just remembered what guards we’re talking about.  Carry on.

Then Lucy shows up, and…quite suddenly, Lucy and Aspen are in love.  Um…okay.  Moving on.

America goes to see Maxon, and they talk privately about how it’s so sad his parents died.  Apparently his mom tried to save the king by jumping in front of him, but all that accomplished was that it took two shows to kill him instead of one.

“She was always selfless. To her very last breath.”

Yes, as was clearly demonstrated by all the previous times she … um… well… there was… erm…

Also, Maxon has been king for less than 12 hours and has spent that entire time shot in the chest and dealing with the aftermath of regicide and god knows how many other deaths…but he’s somehow already drawn up paperwork to dissolve the castes?

I mean, it is the last chapter and he does say it’ll take a while, but…why is this the last chapter if the book was so concerned about typing up loose ends and making people look good?

And then he gives her an engagement ring and asks her to marry him.  Again.  Of course she says yes.

Then the epilogue is just six pages detailing America’s walk down the aisle on her wedding day.  That walk lasts longer than the entire rebel attack.  But, hey, what do you expect with priorities like this book’s?

So, here’s what happens after the end of the book.  America and Maxon keep having fights; it’s what they’ve done their entire relationship and nothing has indicated that they’ll stop.  Thus is the danger when you make a ‘fractious’ romantic couple.  So, their marriage lasts…two years.  Five, tops.  One year before they get separate bedrooms.

Maxon announces his plan to get rid of Eights, with a heavy implication that the rest will follow.  Since this announcement comes right after the “end the castes” rebels kill a bunch of people, they assume that killing a bunch of people is an a-okay way to get shit done.  They keep doing that. The Sixes and Fives get pissed off that things are moving too slow and they aren’t di-caste-i-fied yet, and massive strikes ensue.  Then other forms of chaos.  All Eights are drafted into the army.  (Why weren’t they already?)  As far as I can tell from what the book gave me, no one went after the deadly rebels, so they just made an even stronger power base.  Right after Maxon’s five-year split with America, he’s assassinated by rebels.

August takes over.  Turns out he was an evil despot in waiting all along.  (Because, come on, he’s suspicious as fuck.)  Things get even more caste-y instead of less.

The war in Asia, it turns out, was just Illea fucking around overseas and no one else can even figure out why they were attacking.  (Because the book seems to have completely forgotten about that entire subplot.)  With all the increased tension at home, they slowly started sending less and less over there, and the people they were attacking went “well thank god that’s over.  Fuckity what?”  Then they realize what a dickhead August is, fear he’s going to do something the same (or even worse) and just nuke the entire continent into radioactive glass because clearly there is stupid juice in the water.

Really, it’s the only logical solution.