veronica roth is so smart. 
 not only is she releasing, in measured intervals, four novellas (four about FOUR!! get it??) that lead right up to the release date for the Divergent movie in march, but she is being smart about how she writes them. 
 i wasn't crazy about Free Four: Tobias Tells the Story, but this one is fantastic. with Free Four: Tobias Tells the Story, she just retold a scene from Divergent from tobias' perspective. which is nice, but since i am too old to be crushing on a (teenage) character from a book, i didn't get all whoopty-blah about it. it was fine, and i love that it exists for the more age-appropriate fans to swoon over, but it didn't really work for me as a reader. 
 but this one did. and going by my two-years-ago memory of reading Divergent (and reading other people's reviews of The Transfer: A Divergent Story, thank you all) there isn't any new, revelatory material here. everything here, plotwise, has been covered in the previous books. but roth fleshed out the bones of known backstory with that meat of fiction: character. and it reminded me why i liked Divergent so much. so it works as a refresher: "this is why you liked this character, remember?? this is where he is coming from and what he has experienced. and this is how i write, which is not the most poetic or original style in the world, but it is with a powerful sense of sympathy and immediacy. and you like that." 
 so it's great to have this memory-blast, and i assume the three forthcoming ones will be the same kind of thing - where we aren't being given new material, just enhanced, already-known plot, which doesn't come across as redundant because of all the added surrounding detail, but which also means that a fan without access to e-books isn't going to be deprived of actual content if they aren't able to read them. 
 smart, smart, smart. 
 what is not smart is this casting. 
 now, according to my imdb-and-math skills, this guy is only 24, and tobias is supposed to be 18, but this actor looks so much older than 24, right? this isn't a kid, this is a full-on grown-up dude. 
 "i do not care for it" i sniff petulantly. 
 but i did care for this story. and i will gladly be snatching up the other three. 
 WOOT!