The Traitor By: Veronica Roth Series: Divergent Book Number: 0.4 Star Rating: Sensuality Rating:

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Synopsis

Nearly two years after the events of The Son, Four continues his investigation into the connection between Dauntless and Erudite, uncovering a plot that places him in an untenable position. He must either turn traitor on Dauntless by revealing what he knows or betray his faction of birth by letting people get hurt or killed. As Four struggles to chose the right path, he begins training a new group of initiates, which includes an intriguing young woman named Tris, whom he finds himself strongly attracted to and would like to get to know better.

Review

The Traitor was a nice wrap-up to the Four anthology and to the group of novellas that have now become widely viewed as prequels to the Divergent series. Despite that, I personally still think it's better to at least read Divergent first. Otherwise, the reader will get major spoilers for that book and some things might not make a lot of sense. That's especially true with this novella, which takes place pretty much simultaneously with events in Divergent. In this story, we learn how Four became aware of the unholy alliance between Dauntless and Erudite and their plans to attack Abnegation. He goes through some soul-searching as he tries to decide whether to warn his birth faction or not, as well as whether he can trust anyone enough to tell them these things. As he struggles with figuring those things out, he meets Tris and becomes her trainer, and we get to see some of the early parts of their relationship from his POV.

I think I've said it with each new novella I read in this series, but it might bear repeating that IMHO, the Divergent series as a whole would have been much better if it had been written in dual perspective. Getting Four's POV on many of the events of the series has been great and has really helped to deepen my understanding of him as a character and some of the things that happened. It's been so long since I read Divergent that I can't recall precisely how the specific scenes in this novella compare to those same scenes in the main book from Tris's POV, but I do recall complaining in my review of that book that the parts where Four takes Tris into his fear landscape along with their subsequent discussion and first kiss at the chasm afterward didn't hold the emotional weight I felt they should have. Well, in this novella, that's completely different, and I believe it's all owed to the fact that we're seeing what all this meant to Four. We learn why he chose to take Tris into his fear landscape and what it felt like for him going through that with her. We also get a richer conversation afterward and get to see his burgeoning feelings for her, too. It all made their relationship much more cohesive for me. The only reason I chose to knock off a half-star is because a few of the scenes seemed a bit repetitive with us only getting a slightly different perspective, but overall, I liked this novella a lot and really think that these scenes should have been included in the main Divergent book. The Traitor was originally published as a stand-alone e-book novella, but was later reprinted in the anthology Four, along with its other three companion novellas.

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Veronica Roth