…okay, where do I begin for this one? There is so much I want to talk about and so much I can’t give away, no matter how much I’d love to…but for those of you who haven’t read this, considering it’s fairly new, I will warn you where there’s a spoiler alert. But for now, you’re safe 🙂
So, it’s the last in the trilogy by Veronica Roth. I had the date in my (virtual) calendar for months. And, well, I was disappointed.
I can safely say that Divergent is one of my favorite books. I’m not saying that lightly, because I am a huge bookworm, as I’m sure you’ve gathered. Divergent went past The Hunger Games. It was right up there with my all time favorite books, the ones I reread countless times. I got the collector’s edition of Insurgent while I was anticipating Allegiant. I spent all my spare time on Veronica Roth’s blog looking for quotes, hints, anything for Allegiant. On the 22nd, the release date, I went out first thing and dragged my poor mom to six or seven bookstores looking for it. I finally found it and read it all, that night.
I really sympathize with Veronica Roth. She had a deadline. She had all these readers, waiting. But I was reading the Amazon reviews for the book a few minutes ago, and it’s quite sad to see that a lot of people agree with me: the book really isn’t as good as we all hoped. In the couple of days that followed, I tried to convince myself that I loved it. I really, truly did. And I was all set to write a great big load of praise for how amazing the book was, and I wish I could! But I realized, yesterday, that I was trying to convince myself because I spent so much time waiting for it.
*spoiler alert from here onward*
The books were split onto Tris and Tobias’ POV, right? And, well, if you’re reading this bit I’m assuming you’ve read the ending: so it’s safe to say this was needed unless we wanted to end on the note where Tris dies.
But, and this is just my opinion: you couldn’t differentiate between the two. It became confusing. I had to go back to the start of chapters to remember who this was, because it all sounded like Tris! I mean, each character should have it’s own sense of identity, right? If you look at Noughts and Crosses: it’s in different POVs. But you can tell, just by each character’s manner of speech, who it is. But here? I couldn’t tell, and it became irritating(I can tell this is going to be one of my longer posts: there’s so much to say).
And, well, this whole “outside the fence” world…I was hoping for something really different, something that would kick start the real plot. I was hoping for some of the danger, some of the beauty of the other books – some of the perfect moments that make it Divergent. I felt like the whole book was a filler. I was bored, for crying out loud. And I think I was hoping, the whole way through, that this wasn’t all the book was going to be.
Tris is supposed to be from Abnegation. In Divergent, we see her slowly letting go of that in “Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that people do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined. I swear she exists, and she hurts for the repentant boy I see in front of me.
But if I saw her, I wouldn’t recognize her.”
And really? I was fine with that. She wrote Tris letting go of Abnegation slowly. But still, through Divergent and Insurgent, she is still Abnegation inside. She really is. Not in the asking-questions-is-not-allowed way, but in the forgiving way. In the good way. And if I show you a few more quotes from Divergent:
“Abnegation is what I am. It is what I am when I’m not thinking about what I’m doing. It is what I am when I am put to the test. It is what I am even when I appear to be brave. Am I in the wrong faction?”
“Tori was the only one in the tattoo place, so I felt safe getting the symbol of Abnegation—a pair of hands, palms up as if to help someone stand, bounded by a circle—on my right shoulder. I know it was a risk, especially after all that’s happened. But that symbol is a part of my identity, and it felt important to me that I wear it on my skin.”
She is Abnegation through and through; and in Divergent, there’s so much ‘bravery and selflessness are the same thing’ that the transition from Abnegation to Dauntless is smooth. Come Allegiant, suddenly she’s overbearing and she’s not the Tris I grew to adore. And the book felt boring because when out-of-character-Tris and sounds-the-same-Tobias weren’t arguing, there were more bad rebellion ideas that they still went along with. And Tori: her death felt so…insignificant. I didn’t feel anything until we met her brother.
Deaths…sometimes they’re necessary. They happen. They happen in Noughts and Crosses with Callum. They happen in Harry Potterwith Fred and Tonks and Lupin and so many others. They happen here, but I felt Tori’s was unnecessary. Uriah’s, I think, was the only one that worked for me. Uriah’s death broke my heart.
And that brings me onto the biggest part of this review…Tris.
She is- was our main character. To quote Divergent…”that is death – shifting from is to was.” And, well, I think this was the most horrible way to end the book.
Oh, she wrote it well. The way her mother appeared…and you can finally see why Tobias’ POV was needed. But I don’t think she really needed to die.
Her and Tobias fought so much; it was the kind of relationship that needed to end with ‘We were broken, but we were perfect.’ They had such a broken relationship that it needed redemption. But there never was any.
The rest of it, considering what had happened, was beautiful. That, I think, was the only return to the Divergent I knew and loved. After Tris died.
And I think that’s really quite sad.
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Author Veronica Roth’s BLOG
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Allegiant WIKI
It’s not horrendously complicated. It’s not a billion words long. It’s simple, and short, and incredibly (sorry if this sounds sappy) moving. It’s about a boy called August, and he’s ten years old. The quote on the blurb is “My name is August. I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.”He was born with rare genetic disorders, and his face is like a horror mask (not my description!), and it’s all about how people adapt, how people react, and how August takes it.
The thing is- and I don’t know if this is just me- I didn’t find it as amazing as everyone’s been raving about. It’s definitely a very heartbreaking book, but it’s not- well, not as brilliant as everyone told me. I bought it on a recommendation, and it’s definitely one that will stay on my bookshelf- but it’s not quite as ‘you will start crying, seriously’ as I was told.
TEEN book addict 