Speculation on The Sixth Faction and the Opportunity for Roth to Do Something New with Erudite
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. I LITERALLY GASPED AT THE NEWS. THIS IS THE BEST NEWS I’VE HAD IN A LONG TIME. THIS IS INCREDIBLE—NEVER DID I THINK SOMETHING LIKE THIS COULD EVER EVEN HAPPEN. I THOUGHT THE SERIES WAS DONE WITH FOREVER!
Also, look at the cover. Blue is such a dominant color. The background looks like the wave-of-change motif/wave sculpture, but it's also circular like the other books' symbols and circular like an eye, with a pupil and iris. I know that the title probably implies a sixth, potentially new or informal/unofficial, de facto sixth faction (or the Factionless) in this alternate reality, but what if it's Erudite?! This may just be wishful thinking, but I really want Tris to choose Erudite this time because if there's an underground rebellion, surely not every Erudite would have sided with Jeanine. (And this could have implied the existence of an underground movement against corruption within the faction in the original trilogy.)
Plus, the sleek tech stuff—what if this book really leaned into the sci-fi/psychological angle? Would we know more about the simulation mechanics than we already do? If this book does any social commentary beyond something like individualism being the main focus originally, what if there's some sort of commentary on the American anti-intellectual crisis as of late? And even the original trilogy had themes of censorship in it. This has so much potential, and I feel like I can trust it will be great, even if it goes in a different direction than what I'm speculating it could be about. At least I feel like there could be something worth exploring/discussing on this front.
Any thoughts, or other ideas to add, anyone? Is my take plausible to you?
One final thought:
What if Tris has to survive the way the Scandinavian sailor in "A Descent into the Maelström" by Edgar Allan Poe has to in the cyclone/whirlpool by using her powers of observation and deduction, just like with the dog attack trial in the original aptitude test? Even if it's not the threat of drowning, this being more a book on outwitting the enemy over action/war as a soldier (typically from an active on-the-ground, limited-information pov) for once could be an interesting angle as well, diverging from other usual dystopian protagonists’ trajectories, like taking down Erudite from the inside (not unlike that arc wherein Tris cooperates for sometime locked in the fear simulation machine).
Instead of “fear wakes you up,” it could be some variant of: realizing something about your environment wakes you up. (Though that would be less catchy, it could still say something about the human brain acclimating itself to the nature of reality. Tris could be the metaphorical frog about to be boiled with the temperature only incrementally increasing so she can’t jump out, unless she wakes up to her situation all of a sudden before it’s too late.)
