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The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered -- fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she's known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories. But Tris's new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature -- and of herself -- while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love.… (more)
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*No Spoilers Here*
I just finished and I'm dumbfounded. The elements I loved about this trilogy ran in reverse in Allegiant.
In the first two, I loved Tris' strength, her growth in her
Allegiant was all over the place. Characters (as in several) didn't stay true to their earlier development in the previous two books or worse, flip floppy convictions and miraculous changes of heart from chapter one until the end.
There is character death and the ending. Guh. Life is imperfect and not all is warm and fuzzy in dystopia. I get this but the ending felt like it was written simply to be different and for shock value more than anything. It didnt fit or make any sense to me, let alone aiding to creating a beautiful whole story.
I had high hopes for the ending and getting answers. Answers to the whats and whys and the significance and driving force behind the factions, where they go from here, what is on the outside, how to make peace...but came to an ending with plot holes and hopelessness in this confusing mess of simplistic let-downs and contradictions that fell flat. Flatter than missing a towering platform while jumping off a train.
I read to the last page and said, "I cannot. What. was. that!?" I cant explain more without spoilers...but needless to say, this book felt rushed and confusing, like the author didn't know where to go either. Apparently, not so, as its been revealed that the author planned the end from the very beginning.
I loved the first two stories. Brilliantly done. But this one missed it by miles.
Allegiant picks up a few days after the ending of Insurgent. The story takes place in a future community in former Chicago that had previously been
Our two heroes and alternating narrators are former Dauntless members Tris (Beatrice) and Tobias (also known as Four). Tobias struggles with the knowledge that he has a set of awful parents, who are not only divorced, but who head opposing political parties as well: Marcus Eaton is head of The Allegiant, and Evelyn Eaton heads the Factionless.
Tris struggles with the death of her parents during the recent uprising, when Erudite attacked Abnegation. Tris’s Abnegation parents died in acts of selflessness and sacrifice, in true Abnegation fashion. Tris is desperate for their deaths not to have been in vain, which means that she thinks she needs to figure out what they were trying to do and do it for them.
In the meanwhile, Tris, Tobias and a group of friends leave the city to meet up with the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, an agency of the U.S. Government presumably dedicated to enhancing the life of all the survivors of the Purity Wars. These were civil wars waged between those with and without genetic alterations, and the wars killed almost half of the country’s population. But all is not well at The Bureau. Upon their arrival the friends discover that there is also an emergence of an allegiance of insurgence there as well....
A Lot That Is Not So Good:
The characters in the book keep making outrageous and impulsive decisions that entail drastic options, rather than considering, say, negotiation and compromise (except under the threat of death). Yes, some of them are just kids, but many of them have been classified Erudite. That just seems contradictory.
Characters change hugely in this book. Tobias, in Book One, was a tough, tough guy: confident, courageous, and strong. In this book, he’s weak and weepy. And his mother? Her metamorphosis at the end was literally unbelievable, almost laughable. Even Tris, who supposedly “grows” at the end and finds her purpose and identity, is really, it seems to me, just finding a more acceptable way to rationalize her reckless and headstrong behavior. Same wine, new label. I wasn’t convinced of her new maturity, only of her new glibness. Her reasoning for her last choice at the end of the book was particularly absurd; like Tobias’s mother, she suddenly chucked all her former convictions and emotions, and went against her previous instincts. (This is especially ironic since Tris has spent the whole book excoriating Tobias for not just following along blindly with her instincts, since she is convinced they are always right.) As for Tris’s brother Caleb, who knows? His character flipped back and forth almost as often as Tris’s attitude toward him (but no, the two didn’t always correspond).
And then there is the narrator alternation. I don’t mind this at all, as long as one can see a distinction between the characters. In this book, with the strange morphing of their personas, I kept having to turn back to the chapter beginning to figure out who was talking, Tris or Tobias.
Meanwhile, the world-building also took a hit in this book. We got lots of new “world” elements added in, but hardly any disquisition about them. What we do get is overly simplistic, almost caricatured.
So Why Do I Still Rate It 3?
I liked the first book a great deal, so I was attached to the characters. It was like The Hunger Games for me: each book seemed a little less good than the one that preceded it, and yet, how could you not read it? There's also a nice bit at the end about figuring out what bravery really means, which is nothing like The Dauntless faction had presumed.
Evaluation: This is not a standalone, but definitely read this one if you are already invested in the series.
The story switches between Tris’s and Tobias's point of view. Tris is languishing in lockdown after releasing
It honestly took me a while to figure out what I thought about this book. There are certain things that happen at the end that will piss off the reader big time. So I had to take some time and think the book through in order not to just have the “Oh, my God I hate this book” reaction. In the end I realized that there were a lot of things...not just the ending...that I was disappointed about.
I think a lot of these dystopian trilogies suffer from poor endings. I mean really, the first book is the big reveal of a cool new world and neat ideas. The second book is further development of those ideas. The third book has to resolve stuff, and that’s tough when honestly the resolution is usually a bit convoluted and boring. I mean ultimately you are looking at replacing a corrupt system with a better one...and that’s not all that exciting or easy to do in an entertaining way. I can’t think of one dystopian series I have read where the final book in the series is better than the earlier books.
I did like that Tris and Tobias actually tried to work through their relationship problems. However, even this got a bit old...they have the same problems over and over again. The chemistry between these two seems to have cooled off some in this book.
The book is very readable and well written, I am not sure I liked how convoluted the story got. I was a kind of disappointed when Tris and Tobias get out of the city and find very similar problems to what they faced in the city. There are multiple factions outside the city and people are not being treated fairly. The outside was just an echo of the inside of the city (or visa versa). The addition of more and more different factions just got old...and to be honest boring. No surprises, nothing all that interesting or groundshaking. I was having trouble staying awake as I read this book.
This is a long book...I feel like a lot of what is in here was unnecessary and just added complication. The whole thing ends up being a war between Tobias’s dad and Tobias’s mom...which is kind of dumb and disappointing. Not to mention the vast number of coincidences that happen in this story to lead the reader to that point. It just came of as convoluted and contrived.
Also, while I understand the ending of the book and why it was possibly the most realistic path forward, I also think it wouldn't have killed Roth to write an ending that was just a little bit more happy. It would have been nice to give the reader a bit more hope that things in this world were going to go the right way in the end. As mentioned above this is part of why I am getting sick of dystopia...they never end all that happy.
Overall definitely the weakest book of the trilogy. I still enjoy Roth’s writing style but I thought that what Tobias and Tris found Outside was disappointing, boring, and just added complication that didn’t need to be there. I didn’t enjoy the addition of yet more groups and factions and the fact that the whole thing ended up being more of a war between Tobias’s parents than anything else. I also didn’t like the ending, although I understand how it fit the story well. I really wasn’t a fan of this book, it felt more like a necessary evil I had to read to finish this series than anything else.
All that being said, the first two books in this series were absolutely excellent. So I still recommend the series as a whole; it is really really well done. Unfortunately this final book was probably my biggest disappointment of 2013.
[[SPOILERS]]
I loved this series - up to this book.
I think the characters became too tunnel-visioned. They didn't look for the other ways to stop David, didnot play any other solutions or scenarios. And when it played out, things that would
I think Four struggled with not knowing how to identify himself without the Divergent status. Being abused and abandoned in his childhood, then told he was "genetically damaged." (And I think Tris was not totally clued in even though she tried to explain he was no different than he was before) I can see where that would have screwed with his head. I do think this was well written. But how much is the man supposed to endure; suffering his childhood and know his adulthood, though he did get the acceptance from his mother he wanted.
Besides: I LOVE FOUR.
My opinion.
And I didn't hate it. (Ringing endorsement, right?) As many of you have observed, the alternating voices, from Tris to Tobias, made the book a little hard to read, especially since one character's thoughts, words, and actions could often be mistaken for the other's. But I found some of the secrets that were revealed to be quite interesting, and I thought that the characters generally responded to them the way I thought they would. (Trying hard for no spoilers here!) And perhaps that's why I didn't object as much to the ending as some readers did. Don't get me wrong - I didn't like it at all. But it seemed consistent with the characters that I had come to know. In the end, I'm glad that I read this one for closure, but Divergent still remains my favorite of the three.
As a small group leaves the previously gated area of what is soon identified as Chicago, Tris, Tobias, and others made their way to the “Bureau”, the nearest governing agency, where they learned of a new bias, Genetically Pure (GP) vs. Genetically Damaged (GD). The GDs are the results of previous generations attempting to correct flaws of human nature, which led to the Purity War, decimating half the population. The result is a division of GP vs. GD. Divergents are GDs who have healed themselves over the generations to become GPs. GDs are treated as second class citizens and relatively disposable. In fact, Chicago and several cities are experiments to correct the GD problem. The factions were designed to provide guidelines and structures on ‘how to live’, adding order to their living. The obvious flaws of the factions are identified as follows by Tris: “The Dauntless, brave but cruel; the Erudite, intelligent but vain; the Amity, peaceful but passive; the Candor, honest but inconsiderate; the Abnegation, selfless but stifling (and lacks self-preservation).” The key question becomes, “Do the GDs need correcting?” I won’t go further on the plot summary.
Overall, I like the ideas of these three books, but the layout and structure could have been better. Divergent made me think more and Insurgent was more action oriented, even though all 3 were easy, popcorn reads. The second book needed more hints of the future with seeds of doubt, questions, and curiosity about the outside and their identity. The third book needed to wrap with a bang (such as Mockingjay), and Allegiant was a disappointment in comparison. I think trilogies are becoming overrated as too many authors are jumping on the bandwagon without thoughtful pre-planning.
A few quotes:
On the strength and weakness in each of us:
Tris: “I relax, and I no longer feel like some kind of Divergent soldier, defying serums and government leaders alike. I feel softer, lighter, and like it is okay to laugh a little as his fingers brush over my hips and the small of my back, or to sigh into his ear when he pulls me against him, burying his face in the side of my neck so that he can kiss me there. I feel like myself, strong and weak at once – allowed, at least for a little while, to be both.”
On morning rituals – I laughed at this as I know quite a few morning coffee zombies:
Tobias: “It’s strange to see people you don’t know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks; to know that Christina is cheerful in the morning, and Peter wakes up with his hair perfectly flat, but Cara communicates only through a series of grunts, inching her way, limb by limb, toward coffee.”
On Inner Turmoil – the hurting inner self in many of us:
Tris on Tobias: “… I was right to say that he was desperate, desperate for a connection to Evelyn (=his mother), desperate not to be damaged (=GD), but I never thought about how those things were connected. I don’t know how it would feel, to hate your own history and to crave love from the people who gave that history to you at the same time. How have I never seen the schism inside his heart? How have I never realized before that for all the strong, kind parts of him, there are also hurting, broken parts?”
On being short – ok, this is me:
Tris: “Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.”
The finale – I definitely believe the first part. I’m still working on the second part:
Tobias: “Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, everyone. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.”
On the other hand, these books don't quite hang
One of my favourite bits of these books was the side-story of Christina. Christina transfers to Dauntless from Candor, makes friends with Tris, and falls in love with Will. Due to Plot, Tris ends up shooting and killing Will (and it's pretty clear that she doesn't _have_ to shoot to kill, although she's in a difficult and stressful situation). Christina never ends up centre stage in the books, but the story of her grieving and working out forgiveness is a fascinating one. More fanfic needed :-)
I agree with everyone else, the alternating view points is annoying, and the voices of Tobias and Tris aren't quite different enough to stop it being confusing. But given the point of this book is Tris's death, it would be hard to show our responses to it if we had no viewpoint characters left...
There's a nice paragraph about love and how you have to keep chosing each other.
Read/Listened for Fun (Hardcover/Audible)
Overall Rating: 3.00
Story Rating: 3.25
Character Rating: 2.75
Audio Rating: 4.00 (not part of the overall rating)
First Thought when Finished: Allegiant kind of sealed the deal that YA Dystopian trilogies and my expectations
Instead of a review I am going to explain my experience (to this point) with ending books in YA Dystopian trilogies.
Please Note: I don't read a lot of YA so having the same exact experience with two different series in one sub-genre denotes a pattern to me. Also, I believe the author should write the story they want to tell. This is not a bash against the author for choosing to tell their stories in a way they saw fit. This is my experience as a limited-YA reader.
The 2 Series: The Hunger Games and Divergent
Book 1 (in both series): I liked enough to make me want to read book 2
Book 2 (in both series): Was my absolute favorite! Made me excited for book 3
Book 3 (in both series): Was a total struggle to even finish and by the end I just didn't care.
What went wrong for me (examples will be given from Allegiant since I wrote a review of Mockingjay)....
The Characters (other than the leads): Through the course of both series I formed strong attachments to certain side characters (good, bad, borderline). They played strong parts in the first or second (or both) books but in the third book either acted out of character or was given a two second wrap-up that totally seemed to diminish their importance. This frustrated me to no end. I would argue that the side characters are what made both of these stories work so darn well in book 2 (the books I loved in both instances). Example: Four's (Tobias) mom doing what she did at the end of the story. While I "got' it. The choice (and reaction) were to neat for that storyline.
The Leads: In both series, the final book turned strong confident characters into unrecognizable whiners that had brief moments of the characters that I had grown to love. They made choices that made me go "huh" and went against what I would expect of them. Oddly enough, Tris' choice at the end is what made me rate Allegiant a 3 instead of a 2. That choice has most people in a uproar but to me it was one of the few times I saw the Tris that I had been rooting for. The reason I loved the beginning of both of these stories was the strong female protagonist. They were examples I thought fitting for strong young woman coming up in the world. The guys were not much better other than I think Peeta. I believe he was the most "in character" with all his decisions and reactions. Example from Allegiant: Four almost through out the whole entire last book where almost anything was concerned. He seemed unsure and angry at everything. He made choices that just had me shaking my head. Tris wasn't that much better but towards the end she seemed to snap out of it and forge ahead.
The Story: The endings left me wanting but I couldn't exactly tell you for what. The characters changed so much during the last books that by the end, I either didn't care or was hoping for something HUGE to bring out the inner fire that I loved in all the characters. That just didn't happen in Mockingjay and with Allegiant it happened with Tris but not Four. I just felt let down after investing so much into caring about these characters. For Example: In Allegiant after Tris makes her decision, Four's reaction left me a bit cold. I cried for Tris but Four just made me feel "meh". I know I should have had a stronger reaction but just couldn't muster it.
The Shock Value: Both stories had twists (several) that were supposed to make you squeek and go "oh my". Problem is that by the 3rd or 4th one I just didn't care. I was more like "oh I bet there will be another one before the end". At some point there were just too many. Example: By the time we got to Four and his mom (not giving away what happens there), I honestly didn't care. It was just one more twist that was supposed to have an emotional impact but by then the whole thing had just boiled down to "let's just get it done" for me.
The Different Ratings: I gave Mockingjay a 2.75 and Allegiant a 3.0--the difference was that I felt Tris in the end was true to her character. I didn't feel that with Katniss. I ended up rating both end books slightly higher than if they had been stand alone books because I felt like overall the series was a good read (especially book 2 in both).
I am still holding out hope for Horde by Ann Aguirre! Maybe this will break my YA Dystopian curse. If not, I may just forgo the trilogies in the future as they might not be a good fit for me as a reader.
The Audio for Allegiant was excellent! The only problem I had was the dual POV's overall and that made me read 60% of the story. This was not the fault of the narrators. It was just a story telling device that did not work for me.
Insurgent was harder for me to get through. It wasn't as enjoyable and the cracks in the logic of the story really started to show. To be honest, I barely remembered what happened. I knew the ending was a cliff-hanger...but I couldn't remember what the cliff-hanger was. I had to go back and look it up before I started on Allegiant. That is how little an impression the book left on me.
And now we get to Allegiant where it's all action, all the time. The action was fun in Divergent but gets tiring here. I would have liked to have seen some introspection from the characters but Tris and Tobias seem to have no interior life and spend no time really contemplating what's happening around them. The story just moves from plot point to convoluted plot point. Which is another problem: world-building logic really breaks down here. The Chicago experiment and the genetic wars make no sense. With good storytelling, these plot points wouldn't need to make perfect sense--but this is not good storytelling and I spent most of the book trying to work out exactly why any of this is happening because Roth doesn't give you anything else to think about. The characters become annoying and two-dimensional and the love story ultimately felt tacked on to just give the reader a small pause between action/arguing about rebellion/brief exposition scenes. If the romance between Tris and Four is supposed to humanize them, it doesn't work.
Veronica Roth created the structure of an interesting world but she needed a better editor to fix her clunky storytelling and to help her make sense of the plot.
One thing I loved about this book was the emphasis put on grief, both living with it and the guilt that can come with it. Grief affects everyone in different ways because we all cope differently. It makes some people hard, others weak. This book deals heavily with the cycle of abuse and how that affects both the abuser and the abused. I like that despite the chaos of a dystopian society, Roth still looked at the complicated family relationships of the main characters.
“I have only hazy memories of my own grief over my mother, just the feeling that I was separate from everything around me, and this constant sensation from everything around me, and this constant sensation of needing to swallow something. I don’t know what it’s like for other people.”
I also really appreciate how Tris and Tobias’ relationship matures through the series. Both of them start to realize that talking through things is important. You can’t keep secrets. You can’t take your love for granted. They start to understand that true self-sacrifice is not just running blindly into danger.
“I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.”
***SPOILERS***
About the ending… I unfortunately had the ending spoiled for me by the stupid internet about half the way through the book. So I knew what was going to happen and I don’t think there’s any way to avoid having that affect the way I read the book. Knowing Tris was going to die at the end helped the event itself not be as shocking as it was for others. It didn’t feel wrong to me. People die in war and Tris had a tendency to gravitate towards dangerous situations. I really loved Tobias and Tris together, but to me the story was actually more powerful this way. Tris is the one who helped Tobias heal. She showed him that he deserved to be loved and between that and Evelyn’s decision to choose him I think he can possibly lead a healthier and happier life in the long run. I would have loved it if they ended up together, but I like that Tris didn’t rush into danger this time, she sacrificed herself for others out of love, it was the opposite of what she did in Insurgent.
**SPOILERS OVER***
BOTTOM LINE: The trilogy isn’t perfect and I know a lot of people are furious about the ending, but I’m not one of them. The story was interesting, the characters had chemistry and the writing was good. The whole series kept me hooked and I loved that it dealt with deeper issues. I’d recommend it if you enjoy dystopian books, but know going into it that it has got some flaws.
“I don’t belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don’t belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the fringe. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me—they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to know how to take care of people.”
“He makes the acquisition of knowledge feel like a secret, beautiful thing, and an ancient thing. I feel like, if I read this book, I can reach backward through all the generations of humanity to the very first one, that I can participate in something many times larger and older than myself.”
“That’s what love does, when it’s right – it makes you more than you were, more than you thought you could be.”
But just because the ending isn't the way I wanted it to be, doesn't mean that it wasn't the right ending for the book or the character. Sometimes the arc of a
Love the book. Love the series. Good work, Ms. Roth. Well done.
This book also pulled them outside the bubble, so to speak, and opened up whole new cans of worms, ideals & enemies. Since it took place outside their city, it had a different feel, and some of the freedoms the characters were given in their new setting seemed a bit unbelievable.
As far as the ending that everyone seems so up in arms about (I won't spoil it for you), I get it. It didn't bother me that there was no happily-ever-after ending. I did like that the conflict with Tris's brother Caleb was given some attention and resolution, though.
So, all in all, I feel like it still wasn't as great as Divergent, and lacked the depth of characters we found in Insurgent. I would rate it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.
That's not the reason I hated it though--the
But part of my distaste for the series is that I disagree so strongly with her beliefs about human nature, so that when the reveal came about the foundation of the faction system, I lost all interest in her world, because I lost all interest in what she had to say: I was bored--with over 500 pages to go. I just didn't find her take credible. For one, no I do not believe you can tie bravery to cruelty or intelligence to a lack of compassion. But there was more to it than just philosophical disagreement--I just didn't believe in her story of how her future America came apart.
And the alternating points of view between Tris and Tobias... Well, I thought it cruelly exposed Roth's greatest weaknesses as a writer: voice, style, and characterization. I never really believed in Tris and Tobias as teenagers. OK, the world they were in, I get you grow up fast. Still, their relationship was both too innocent and too mature for me to believe this was a teenage romance, let alone first love. And the first person/present tense voices of Tobias and Tris were so droningly alike, they were impossible to tell apart, and I had to constantly refer back to the chapter heading to remind myself who was speaking. None of the minor characters ever came alive for me either. I just in the end--actually way, way, way before the end--found I didn't give a damn.
The first thing that took some getting used to was the two voices that tell this final instalment. It took me a while to get into the fact that Tobias was talking to me rather than Tris. This was probably made harder by the fact that Tobias for me had turned into a wimp in places. He seemed early on to be constantly moaning and to have lost his strength of character. I believe his character is written this way however, to further develop the point the author is trying to make.
The book flows brilliantly and the familiar characters are all there. The ending which other reviews found controversial I found perfect. I could not have thought of a more fitting way to end the book and I admire an author that is willing to take these risks with her writing. I felt the end of the book left no questions unanswered and when finished I was completely satisfied.
for the more sentimental, just make sure you keep tissues on hand...
Normally, the history of the characters/ the world occurs early in the series, but we get most of it in Allegiant. As I waited three books for the dramatic
With a pub. date in 2013, Roth cannot claim The Hunger Games had no influence whatsoever in Allegiant. I found this book to be very similar to Mockingjay in both the state of the heroine and in the rebellion against the corrupted government (with the opposing power not looking so competent either). If you want an exciting, fast-paced, flowing narrative, read Mockingjay instead. Essentially, Allegiant could have used an editor with a stronger hand. I would made many cuts to the editorial to make this book more concise. The tendency toward unnecessary detail in the mundane affected the book's overall impact.
Then again, Allegiant does go to darker places than Mockingjay. There is more vivid detail in the horror and there's more BANG in the violence. There's more death and far more tragedy. This book has no short of injections, guns, explosions, betrayals, suspense, and tragedy.
My biggest complaint is the fact that there were too many enemies! I was getting whiplash as Roth makes you hate and distrust one person after another. It made the narrative seem a little aimless and not as effective as it could have been. For example, the ending sees a reunion between Four and his mother--after we're made to dislike her for a book and a half. Let's pick a villain and build on him or her. The multiple villains makes for too many flat characters.
I won't spoil the ending. Allegiant might have bored me for most of the book, but around page 280, shit really hits the fan. Excuse the language (but there's no other way to describe it). More than the heart-pounding conclusion, Roth makes a very bold choice in her story arc that I did not see coming. When Roth is writing action, she's a powerhouse author. Bold, breathless, and brilliant.
Regardless of the fact that Allegiant was a little dry to start, it is the final book in a popular series. You, like me, NEED to finish the series. It might not be AS good as the first two books, but it's still definitely worth your time! Allegiant is dark and violent. It's filled with twists and turns, and the ending will leave you with a hole in your chest--and not just because the series is over.
Fortunately, the movie is coming... and with the competition of Catching Fire (click to see the trailer!), I think there is a VERY good chance that Divergent (the movie) will not let fans down.
This book alternates between Tris and Tobias' point of view. I didn't particularly like this. We did not get Tobias pov in