Tris sits and mopes in a corner until some other Dauntless lady named Lynn comes by to tell her to buck up because she’s giving the whole faction a bad name by sitting and moping.

I like Tris’s trauma reactions, but every time she and her trauma interact with someone else, it just highlights the fact that she’s literally the only person going through this. The events of last book were traumatic for the entire city, not just Tris, and yet she’s the only one allowed to have PTSD? No one in Dauntless, the faction that routinely kills people while traveling to work, has faced this? Is this how they deal with it, by saying ‘put on a brave face and pretend’? But then why does everyone (including Tobias) act like it’s so unusual that she’s bummed about her totally dead parents?

Once again these books manage to put together something decent but then can’t give it a good home to live in.

“Christina.” Lynn snorts. “She’s a lovesick puppy. People die. That’s what happens in war. She’ll figure it out eventually.”

You have been in exactly zero wars, Lynn. Where is this jaded attitude about it coming from?

Lynn takes her down to where the Dauntless have set up a barracks of sorts by filling a giant empty room with bunk beds. She introduces Tris to her little brother, Hector, who is all in awe of the great and powerful Tris.

“You’re Divergent,” he says. “My mom said to stay away from you because you might be dangerous.”

There is no continuity in these books. None at all.

“Yeah. She’s a big scary Divergent, and she’s going to make your head explode with only the power of her brain,” says Lynn, jabbing him between the eyes with her index finger. “Don’t tell me you actually believe all that kid stuff about the Divergent.”

See, part of the problem with introducing this concept, in addition to it being directly contradicted by the previous book, is that Divergence still isn’t explained very well to us. So apparently there’s all these stories (that we don’t know, because again, first book was different) and we have no idea what prompted those stories, what Divergent people were doing before Tris, or even if they were doing anything at all. Maybe this is all boogieman stuff (which I’m sure is the idea) and no Divergents before Tris have done special stuff, just been talked about. But we don’t know, because the book is so wholly focused on its own protagonist that even when it’s talking about other special people we still can’t even get it to talk about other special people.

And for all we know Tris can explode stuff with her brain, because it’s not like it would be any more confusing than the definition we’ve got now.

Lynn says she thinks that Divergents aren’t even real, just a government conspiracy. Hey, this whole concept is shoddy enough that ‘distraction conspiracy’ actually makes more sense than the truth, and also there’s nothing to contradict Lynn here because the book has not established any history. At least, not any for this concept.

A bunch of other Dauntless girls around Tris’s size offer up spare clothes to give her some options, and Lynn’s sister Shauna has three dresses that she ‘brought’ with her, which means that these people at some point went home and packed. They were home with enough leisure and freedom to pack clothing and then decided to leave again. Why? Because fuck you and your logic, that’s why.

Our ‘curious’ main character does not bother to ask this question, therefore there’s no opportunity for anyone to answer it.

“I think it would be easier to fight in a dress,” says Marlene, tapping her chin. “It would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you’re kicking the crap out of them?”

Lynn goes silent, like she recognizes that as a spark of brilliance but can’t bring herself to admit it.

…first of all, if it really was brilliant then the faction that does nothing but fight would have put that together by now.

Second of all, they didn’t put that together because it’s nonsense. While wearing a skirt certainly isn’t a huge barrier to kicking people, that doesn’t mean it’s better than pants. You can do it, but unless you have very full skirts on or hike them up it’s going to limit how far/high you can kick, and if you have the full skirts then it’s extra fabric for people to grab/that might get caught on something/that might get tangled up/for you to trip over.

Uriah comes over to invite Tris out spying with them that night, because they think that since Erudite leaves all their lights on it’ll be easy to look in the windows from other buildings.

Apparently Erudite has invented efficient solar power, but not window shades.

There’s a few small moments and lines where Tris is vaguely aware that all is not totally right in Lynn-land and that the other Dauntless are probably somewhat fucked up from the whole “I was mind-controlled into murdering someone” thing, and yet, that’s as far as it goes. We still don’t see anyone in it as deep a Tris, nor does anyone (on either side) seem to connect “Tris is in a trauma funk” with “um, everyone’s fucked up.”

It’s like I’m looking at two completely different, unrelated storylines about trauma that just so happened to coexist in the same book.

They leave for the Hancock spy building, and finally, FINALLY, we get some word on why they didn’t stay at the Dauntless headquarters.

We left because Dauntless headquarters has the most surveillance cameras of any area in the city,” Lynn says. “We knew the Erudite could probably access all the footage, and that it would take forever to find all the cameras, so we thought it was best to just leave.”

…you don’t know where your own security cameras are? Didn’t your faction put them in?

And why is it so covered with cameras? Are they not your cameras and this is a sign than the other factions super extra don’t trust you?

On the way they talk about why Lynn shaved her head (so the guys wouldn’t treat her as feminine during initiation) (why is “because I don’t want to deal with it” never a legitimate option when this comes up? I mean, hair-pulling is a thing that happens in hand-to-hand and taking that out as an option is something you might do if really dedicated to it) and Tris talks about how the Dauntless could stand to be a bit more cunning instead of just brute-in-your-face punchy.

Tris has a point, but…does this scene have a point? This whole chapter has been a weird collection of…concepts, I guess. Talking points. Interesting things that exist but don’t really have any relevance to what’s going on at the moment. It’s like the author had all these cool conversations that she wanted to include, but couldn’t find a logical spot for them, so they got all shoved in to a too-short chapter during editing.

It’s strange to see Lynn with a sister—to see Lynn with a connection to someone at all.

You literally met her yesterday and have spent a grand total of, like, an hour with her since then.

They meet up with the rest of the go-spy group and there’s a little bit of banter and then AN EXPLOSION. Dauntless-traitors come in and attack!

The Dauntless have blue laser pointers on their guns, like the red ones we’re used to but blue because…??? I don’t know why they changed the color, especially since red was picked for a reason. It’s easier to see and travels the farthest. (Actually it’s because *some techno science stuff about absorption and wavelength and bending* but the end result is that it’ll be more visible for a longer distance than other colors.) Blue is nearly as opposite from red as you can get, so if red is the best color for laser sights, then blue would be almost literally the worst. (Technically violet would be the worst.)

Stuff! Turns out it’s sometimes that way for a reason and maybe you shouldn’t change it just for the sake of being different.

Anyway, the traitor-Dauntless are firing at everyone and Tris notices she’s got a blue light on her and tries to duck, but not fast enough. Dun dun dun!