We open with Tobias’s interrogation, and they start with a string of basic questions just to get him used to being under the serum. Unfortunately, one of those questions is “what are your parents’ names” and Tobias doesn’t want to answer that. With some difficulty he manages to ask “why” instead of lie or answer, and that gets the guy running the questioning to press the issue.

I think Candor understands truth about as well as Vulcans understand “emotionless,” but at least in their case it’s an extreme I can actually believe. Given enough time and the lack of any, you know, actual goals or purpose in life (because what do people do all day?) and access to super-truth-serum, I can imagine your average group of humans reaching this level. It’s stupid, but it’s a human stupid.

No, my far bigger gripe is how convenient it all is. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of organic continuity from stuff like this. It’s not “the factions are messed up and therefore produce hiccups like this,” it’s “the book decided this would make good drama and blamed the faction stuff for it.” It’s mostly in the fact that we so rarely get to see little consequences from the worldbuilding, and when we do they always are in service to convenient drama and/or don’t mesh with what came before.

Tobias gives up his full name and everyone knows his daddy now and gasps with great shock because…I don’t know, the book thinks every minor no-name character in the stands is equally obsessed with the Eaton family drama?

They finally get to talking about that day, and Tobias admits that he wasn’t under the simulation at first because he’s Divergent. Christina asks Tris if she’s one, too.

I look at her. I have spent the past few months afraid of the word “Divergent,” terrified that anyone would discover what I am. But I won’t be able to hide it anymore. I nod.

So…um, wow, really random reversal on the last book’s “no one must ever know and this is a total super secret thing.”

And it’s a total reversal, because Christina goes on to say that she’s actually heard of the term, and that the Divergent were like fairy tales when she was little. Why? Because the book wants to do something new, now, so it’s just going to, and everything else be damned.

The rest of the chapter is just Tobias recounting what happened at the end of the last book, in case you forgot but waited until you were one-third of the way in to be concerned about that fact. The attempts at explaining science continue to hurt me, but that’s nothing really new.

“The video footage from the Dauntless headquarters shows you running the simulation,”

Okay, about that, wasn’t the simulation already running? I mean, they’d already managed to wake up all of Dauntless, load them onto trains, and start murdering Abnegation members left and right before Tobias and Tris made it back to that control room, so…does Candor’s video just start in the middle of things, or do they not really care? And who was running it before Tobias? And why does it need to be ‘run’ at all if it’s already set up and going?

The book doesn’t care, it just cares that someone can kind of squint and turn sideways and maybe assume that our main characters are guilty because DRAMA. That’s all that matters, no logic or progression of story, just DRAMA.

This is the benefit of the truth serum, I realize. Tobias’s testimony is irrefutable this way.

So these guys are less lawyers and more injection technicians?

“I have a final question,” Niles says. “Among the Candor, before a person is accepted into our community, they have to completely expose themselves. Given the dire circumstances we are in, we require the same of you. So, Tobias Eaton: what are your deepest regrets?”

Um, excuse me, this is not a Candor initiation and no one asked Tobias if he wants to join their community at all. This is a trial. Do you absorb everyone who ever has to stand trial into your faction as a matter of course?

But, hey, like I said, all that matters is DRAMA and fuck the rest.

Well, his greatest regret is leaving Abnegation because he says running away to avoid his father was an act of cowardice and made him unworthy of his new faction. But…then if he’d stay he’d be brave enough for Dauntless, but also stuck elsewhere? Also, I’m really confused about how factions work, because sometimes it’s framed as a choice and sometimes it’s framed as a destiny you just have to guess right. Sometimes the faction molds you into their chosen value, and sometimes you have to already have that trait (and have it 100% without variation). The fact that the book cannot decide if factions form a belief or are formed by a belief is what makes their portrayal so inconsistent.

Then it’s Tris’s turn to take the serum. She finds it makes her go thoughtless and answer questions automatically, but if she tries really, really hard she can still think during the process. She answers the same warm-up questions Tobias had to.

“You were selfish? You aren’t anymore?”

“Of course I am. My mother said that everyone is selfish,” I say, “but I became less selfish in Dauntless. I discovered there were people I would fight for. Die for, even.”

How is that not still Dauntless? Tris continues to only be ‘selfless’ in ways that are also very Dauntless-y, which makes it hard to see her as truly Divergent (by the book’s definition).

As Tris describes her version of that day, she manages to fight off the urge to tell about Will and just tells the truth about everything else.

She gets all the way through the questioning and describes events that would have been clearly depicted on a video recording (does Candor just have incomplete recordings? Can’t be because then their “only telling everything counts as honesty” would compel them to reveal that) and that clears her name. Because…IDK, maybe Candor is just stupid. After all, they aren’t Erudite. Probably they just don’t believe anything that isn’t told under their super special serum.

At the end she’s asked what her greatest regret is, and then she tells about shooting Will. So basically her fighting off the serum before was just something to pad out the word count?

In fact, the last two chapters are nothing but padding. They’re accused of crimes that only barely make sense (unless you change the circumstances and vague-up Candor’s information), but then all they have to do is recap the events of last book and their cleared, no hiccups involved. The only thing that changes is Tris finally talking about Will, but that could have been just as easily accomplished with “Candor makes you do this truth-trust exercise, tell us your greatest regret.” Not only would it have been a lot shorter, but you could have used it as a jumping off point for philosophizing about the nature of honesty and trust. Maybe Tris could have fought off the serum as she did here, but it makes her so tired and she realizes keeping it in was hard even without the serum and wonders if saying it will unload the burden of her secret somewhat and she chooses to tell the truth at last. Still awfully convenient and DRAMA, but at least we’re spared the whole chapter of recapping.