Review: Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth

Four: A Divergent Collection (Divergent #0.1 - # 0.4) by Veronica Roth
Published: July 8th 2014 by HarperCollins
Pages: 208

Two years before Beatrice Prior made her choice, the sixteen-year-old son of Abnegation’s faction leader did the same. Tobias’s transfer to Dauntless is a chance to begin again. Here, he will not be called the name his parents gave him. Here, he will not let fear turn him into a cowering child.

Newly christened “Four,” he discovers during initiation that he will succeed in Dauntless. Initiation is only the beginning, though; Four must claim his place in the Dauntless hierarchy. His decisions will affect future initiates as well as uncover secrets that could threaten his own future—and the future of the entire faction system.

Two years later, Four is poised to take action, but the course is still unclear. The first new initiate who jumps into the net might change all that. With her, the way to righting their world might become clear. With her, it might become possible to be Tobias once again.

"It's been so long since someone said my name that way, like it was a revelation and not a threat." 

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

The Transfer is centered around Four at the time of his Choosing Ceremony, and is therefore the tale of his life at Abnegation. Four was such a different person two years ago. He was scared and wasn't able to stand up for himself. The only thing I could think of while reading was how bad I felt for Four. There was barely anything new to the story, because this part of his life was already told in Divergent. So although we knew why Four made the choice to transfer, this novella offers the opportunity to understand his actions towards Marcus, and that is what made it good. Four stars for The Transfer.

Out of all the four novellas, I think I like The Initiate the best. This one contains a lot of character development for Four and adds more background to his character, but also to other minor characters we got to see in the trilogy, including Dauntless borns such as Shauna, Zeke, Marlene, Uriah, Amar and Max. There were scenes when Tobias's initiation resembled a bit too much to Tris's, but they were eventually easy overlooked because I really enjoyed reading the story and Four's adventures before he met her. Four stars for The Initiate.

While the other novellas are fairly good, The Son reminded me way too much of Allegiant for my liking. The reason why might astonish you even more, because this one is also filled with plot holes and unexplained situations. It brought up questions I never received an answer for and left me confused. By that point I didn't know what to expect of the last novella anymore because this one was just meh. Two stars for The Son.

The Traitor takes place during the events of Divergent and is basically contains our favourite scenes - minus the ferris wheel scene, I still wonder why that one wasn't included - and a few of Four's internal monologues. This one didn't feel like an actual novella anymore, because everything is just told from a different point of view and added almost nothing to the trilogy. It was still nice to read it, but at times this novella felt more like a collection of snippets instead of a real story. Three stars for The Traitor.

After the terrible work of art which is called Allegiant, I never thought to read something from Veronica Roth again. The highly anticipated last book in the once-fantastic Divergent trilogy ruined it in more aspects than I imagined. I didn't enjoy the film as much as I wanted to, I completely lost connection with the trilogy, etc. It's probably the number one reason why I didn't want to pick up this collecion of four novellas set before and during the events of Divergent. It all seemed a bridge too far and an obvious money maker. Despite all that, I did enjoy these short stories and would rather consider them as a satisfying 'conclusion' to this trilogy.