Free Four: Tobias Tells the Divergent Knife-Throwing Scene

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!

Seriously, I was pretty horrified by the glorified violence in Divergent, but this manages to be close to psychotic. Am I supposed to sympathise with this man? He's nasty, completely incapable of making any sort of comment without immediately tacking on some sort of insult, has a very messed up moral core, and is incredibly whiny.

Here's my big issue with this and Divergent. They seem to think that violence is cool, and advocate its use pretty strongly. There's a horrific scene in the book involving a gun, which is the climax of the heroine discussing how secure and in charge she feels with a gun in her hand, that makes my blood curdle. Can we please stop it with this crap?

This is a short and utterly pointless show more piece of writing that serves absolutely no purpose. It's bland, clunky, questionable in tone and intent, and completely fails as a character exercise. Tobias/Four started out as a jerk and remains one throughout Divergent. Here, nothing changes. In fact, he comes out of it being somewhat more psychotic. show less

While I can’t call myself a big fan of the Divergent series, I have enjoyed all the novellas written from Four’s POV. That’s part of why I decided to buy and read Free Four. Even though I knew it was only a retelling of the knife-throwing scene in Divergent, I thought it would be interesting to see it through Four’s eyes. The other reason is that I wanted to complete the series, which for me means reading everything associated with it, although it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen now that there’s another wrap-up novella. It appears that novella was only given as a special gift to readers who pre-ordered Veronica Roth’s new book Carve the Mark (which I didn’t), so it will probably be next-to-impossible to get my show more hands on a copy. Not to mention, IMHO, the author seriously broke faith with readers by ending Allegiant the way she did, and based on critical reviews of We Can Be Mended, the final novella, she’s ruined the story even further, so I can’t say that I’m all that interested in reading it anyway.

So back to my review of Free Four: I enjoyed it every bit as much as the other novellas from Four’s perspective. Throughout reading these novellas, I couldn’t help feeling that Four is a much more dynamic narrator than Tris was. While it’s hard to say whether I would have liked the series better if the entire thing had been written in his POV, I really think that Ms. Roth did Four a disservice by not including his perspective. It should have, at the very least, been written in dual perspective. Of course, that’s just my opinion, but I felt like Four brought a whole new depth to the story that just wasn’t there for me in the original read. However, that’s water under the bridge now, so I’ll simply have to console myself with the knowledge that Four was a much better character than what was originally portrayed in the three novels and leave it at that.

While I did enjoy this novella and I did only pay $0.99 for it, I still felt like it was just a money-grab and that the publisher should have given it away for free. After all, it is a rehashing of a scene that we already knew about, whereas the other novellas about Four were mostly original content. The other thing that was deceptive about it is that Free Four is only approximately ten pages or so, which is a tiny fraction of the full e-book file. The rest of it consists of a two-chapter sample of Divergent, a two-chapter sample of Insurgent, The Transfer, which is the first of the Four novellas and is included as a sample of the anthology Four, a one-chapter excerpt of Carve the Mark, and ads for Veronica Roth’s other books. This means that the vast majority of this “book,” (more than fifty pages by my eReader’s count) is nothing more than advertising. So do I think Free Four was worth the read? Yes. But was it worth the price? Probably not. show less

This is a very short read as it's just a chapter of Divergent being told from Four's perspective. In fact, this review could probably be about the same length. Just kidding!

Four is described in Divergent as mysterious, tough, quietly scary, and kinda cute. In Insurgent, he's like, super hottie status because of the amount of times Tris looks at him, thinks about him, obsesses over him. So naturally, I'm curious about his thoughts, especially when the reader knows only as much as Tris, and Tris barely knows the guy, other than what he chooses to tell her.

And yikes, I'm not sure how I feel about getting to know his character further. He's so interesting, with a great deal of layers, though alternatively, partially a whiny little kid at show more times. It ends up feeling strange reading his thoughts and how he feels about other characters. Like, what? He actually has fears? Yes, I realize that's the very foundation of his character's background but unraveling the mystery is both pleasant and nerve-wracking to me. That written, can't wait to read his trilogy now! show less

This was definitely a short story, but I loved it. In this, Veronica retells the knife-throwing scene from the Dauntless initiation of Divergent. I really liked it, though, because I like to know what other characters are thinking during a certain scene, especially if the book in question is written in first person.

I liked this 13 page treat from V. Roth more than I liked Divergent. Seeing Tobias point of view was the best book I read in the weekend. Always is good to read a tiny different POV from a book which is one from one persons POV. The part Roth decided to write is very revealing for four and I enjoyed it very much.

I usually find books/scenes from books that are rewritten from a different perspective boring, because they're the exact same events but with different thoughts. This was good because it was Divergent, it was Four, and I love both of those things, but it didn't stand out as anything uniquely spectacular.

It was great getting to read a portion of the first book from Four's perspective. Four was always a sort of mystery so it was really interesting reading his thoughts. I would love to read more from Four's point-of-view, so I am thrilled that there will be more short stories and that Allegiant will alternate between Tris and Four. I would recommend that fans of the series read this short story.