Allegiant (Divergent, #3)

by Veronica Roth

What if your whole world was a lie?

The thrillingly dark conclusion to the No. 1 New York Times bestselling DIVERGENT trilogy.

What if a single revelation - like a single choice - changed everything?
What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

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.

Told from a riveting dual perspective, Allegiant, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the Divergent series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.

• ISBN10: 006202406X
• ISBN13: 9780062024060
• Publish Date: 22 October 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 544
• Language: English

Reviews

[kiracanread]

Although this book is truly heartbreaking, it is by far the worst book in the Divergent trilogy. The trilogy started off incredibly well and just went downhill. I don't think I'd be interested in rereading this book again even though it does close a great trilogy.

[thepunktheory]

Full Review on: my Blog ThePunkTheory

Well, you probably know by now that I wasn't too fond of the series so far. However, I had hoped that the final part would turn things around as I saw a lot of potential in the story.
But I ended up disappointed. I'll begin with the novel. First of all, I felt like even Veronica Roth had given up on the whole thing by now. For a long stretch of the final book she wasn't making an effort at all. She decided to split the chapters in two points of view. Some chapters are told from Tris' view, some from Four's. However, the chapter were barely distinguishable. Often I had already read half the chapter before I realized that it's not a Tris but a Four chapter.
In general there's still a lot of whining going on - now not only by Tris but also to a large extent by her annoying boyfriend. I can't bring myself to like any of the two characters and they both make for terrible heroes.
The story could have been strong, intense and thought-provoking but ultimately it was weird and didn't make too much sense. Furthermore, the outcome was rather predictable.

[Joséphine]

Actual rating: 1.5 stars

Initial thoughts: For the most part, I feel apathetic. I didn't hate Allegiant but I certainly didn't care for it either. The set-up was fuelled by some intriguing ideas but with so many plot holes, hardly developed. Tris and Tobias continued to be as uninteresting as ever, made worse by the narrative choice.

The alternating points-of-view were jarring for two reasons: (1) Divergent and Insurgent were from Tris' POV, so to change that in the concluding book obviously was so that in some capacity, it could continue without Tris; (2) Tris and Tobias sounded exactly the same, which made it a little confusing sometime. At one point, I even wondered why Tobias was suddenly kissing "him" because I missed that that chapter belonged to Tris.

To finally learn about what lay beyond Chicago should've been a point of excitement. Instead, it drove the series to ridiculous mess. The world building crumbled, lacked any semblance of structure, and the explanations were too convenient without truly answering questions about the ethical implications and the importance of consent for things to have gone this far.

[CrowNoYami]

My advice for anyone reading this is to not get emotionally attached to anyone. It was great until the last hundred or so pages, not going to say what happens but if you are emotional run away now and just be happy with Insurgent.

[Steph L]

I was so iffy on this book, like the narrative changing because of who was narrating the book every chapter drove me nuts. I had to keep remembering to check because if I didn't then I would not know whose part of the story was being told. Other than that I really did love this book.

[elysium]

2,5 stars

Why I had to wait so long to read this because I don’t remember what happened in Insurgent any more! Or maybe it was a good thing because I can’t help but to feel disappointed… I loved Divergent and liked Insurgent so I’m just so sad that it ended like this.

In this book we have dual pov between Tris and Tobias/Four. And I can’t believe what I read. Where did this wimpy, whining, insecure mess come from? All Four’s chapters are basically one big whiny fest where he does one bad decision after another. That’s like a another person altogether from Four at Divergent. And apparently Tris can do no wrong in this book which was annoying as well.

We finally see the world outside and I wasn’t impressed. There are no factions but the life still isn’t that different and they still deal with pretty much same problems.

So yeah, disappointed is the word of the day… Maybe if I hadn’t loved Divergent so much this would have been better.

[Berls]

This review appeared first at Fantasy is More Fun.

Here's the thing about Allegiant. I went into it knowing that it was this huge polarizing book. People loved it or hated it. I was prepared to feel the same - and I 100% see why people felt both ways. For me, it's 50/50. Hence, 3 stars.

From the get go I was less than thrilled with Allegiant because "whoa, what was this? Tobias's POV and two narrators?!" In and of itself, adding in another POV isn't bad. But what I quickly realized in Allegiant was that I don't really like Tobias/Four that much. I've been back and forth with their relationship - I didn't feel it in Divergent but I liked it in Insurgent - and throughout Allegiant I came back to that original feeling. All because of Tobias - being inside his head did not make me like him more, it made me like him less.

I don't think the narration helped me like this change, either. The addition of Aaron Stanford (male narrator) would have been fine if he was playing all the male parts, I think. But instead he was narrating all the chapters from Tobias's point of view and Emma Galvin was narrating all the chapters from Tris's point of view. So I've got two sets of voices for all the characters to keep track of - 1 set of voices I've known for two whole books, the other is brand new. While both narrators did a good job, the change made the addition of Tobias's POV all the more jarring for me, I think.

I do, however, understand why Veronica Roth made the decision to tell the story from dual perspectives. For where she wanted to go, it made sense. Do I support where she went? *shrugs* I'm abivalent to it. I never cried, though Allegiant took on much more depressing view than expected - repeatedly. But I'm not really upset about any of those depressing moments either.

All in all, not the amazing ending I hoped for, but I didn't hate it either. I would have liked to be wowed, but at least I'm not angry.

[pamela]

Were these books a trilogy? Because I feel like I've just read three different books. What a terrible ending to a terrible series. It's like Veronica Roth realised that her initial plot made no sense so she changed everything up and threw in a lot of action, fireworks, romance and unnecessary plot points just to make sure you didn't notice! "What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again, the tickets are now diamonds!"



Roth's first mistake was attempting to switch first person view between Tris and Tobias. First of all, by changing the format it made the ending relatively obvious, and even more unfortunately she completely lacks the capacity to write a convincing male voice. Both Tris and Tobias had the same voice through their first person narrative, and that voice was distinctly female, and even more distinctly Tris. I had to go back to the beginning of the chapters a few times to remind myself who's viewpoint I was meant to have. The voices were too similar.

The characterisation of Allegiant is poorly executed. Every character that isn't Tris or Tobias is two dimensional and incidental. They serve no purpose, have no personalities, and basically exist to die to create false emotion so Tris has something new to cry about. Even Tobias and Tris have had their third personality iteration, so as I got to the end of the novel which should have left me a pathetic blubbery mess, I had pretty much run out of fucks to give, because I no longer felt that I knew any of the characters.



The thing that bothered me most was the completely warped morality. We're meant to admire Tris for her bravery and selflessness, but she makes the exact same decisions as the 'evil' people in this novel, it's just somehow they're not considered evil because Tris is the one making them. We as readers are asked to accept without question that all Tris' decisions are the right ones, despite evidence to the contrary. Even Tobias is shown to be worthless when he disagrees with Tris, and spends a lot of time whining about that very fact.

Roth set had the potential set up for this series to have a really poignant ending. With the faction system destroyed she could have used the positive elements of the factions to work together to build a future, but instead Roth chose to use the pointless death route. The ending did not say anything, or even mean anything. There is mention of the fact that the rural US is now largely uninhabited, meaning that the potential was there for what remained of the factions to create their own future outside of the government's control, and outside of the experiment. But we didn't get that. We got an abrupt and pointless resolution which just annoyed me. I should have cried. I didn't. I felt nothing because everything went no where. Also, I don't know why this annoyed me so much but, what on earth is the REST of the world during this time? It seems that this genetic experimentation was a US government only initiative, and we know that air travel still exists so why not seek refuge in another country? But the rest of the world is not mentioned once in this train-wreck of a novel.

What I basically got from this series is that when nearing the end of writing Insurgent Veronica Roth saw the film Serenity and possibly the series Firefly as well. She took the video broadcast from Serenity to end Insurgent and then made Allegiant about teen appropriate Reavers.

There you go, I saved you hours of your life. Watch Firefly instead.

If there was a memory serum that could remove the fact that I read Insurgent and Allegiant, I would take it, just so that my memory of all the things that I love in Divergent could be preserved.

Oh no, Zara here comes your infamous random rants...

Allegiant starts off right where Insurgent ends. My memory of what happened in Insurgent was hazy even although I read it only two months ago (Give me a break!). But as I continued to read Allegiant, I did remember most of what happens in Insurgent

Allegiant is told from two POV's: Tris and Tobias(Four). When I saw that Four was getting his own POV, I was a happy fangirl, until I realised that the book would have been much better if it was from a single POV instead of a dual POV. Tris and Tobias POV's sound the same. I would be reading a chapter thinking that it is from Tris's POV, only to realise that it is from Tobias's POV and then I would be all confused and turn back a few pages to see whose POV the chapter is really being told from. Getting Tobias's POV makes him seem weak and insecure and not the same Tobias that my horrible memory remembers from Divergentand Insurgent.

The romance between Tris and Four was a negative aspect of Insurgent that continues in Allegiant. I loved the relationship that Tris and Four had in Divergent. They complemented each other, protected each other and treated each other as equals. In Insurgent, something went wrong and they started to hide things from each other, lie to each other and after arguing for ages, they would "solve" it by making-out. In Allegiant it's almost exactly the same. I started off this series, with a couple that I would ship until the day that I died and I end the series wanting them to break off that same relationship. This means that any interaction involving Tris and Four, no matter how "sentimental" makes me roll my eyes in annoyance.

Since Allegiant is the last book in the trilogy, I wanted it to focus mostly on its original characters. Many new characters are introduced and the new character information is overwhelming. The old characters have no personality or character development that shines through. This makes me feel a little detached from them. Even when a certain incident happens to a certain someone, (show spoiler)[Uriah dies] (hide spoiler) , I knew that Roth was trying to make me feel something, but it didn't work. I remain an emotionless stone.

I have a major issue with the world-building. I loved the faction world and everything about it. Even although I knew that there would be a rebellion or some form of resistance, I wanted at least something of the faction world to remain intact. When Tris travels beyond the gate, she leaves the faction world behind and then cue the info-dumping and unexplained situations that makes my brain hurt. (Why do I always seem to talk about my brain?)

And even although I knew how the series ended before I started it, I didn't like it at all! Because it's the ending, I'm going to discuss it in a spoiler tag... (show spoiler)[Tris dies. So firstly, the way Tris dies suits the type of person that she was, but I dislike when the main character dies at the end of a story if something could have been done to change or prevent the situation. i.e. her death feels unnecessary. If the main character dies at the end, no matter how selfless or brave it is, doesn't it make the whole point of the story non-existent? When I read a book, I want to see the character grow and develop and when they die, all that growth and development that I read about seems to be worthless. ] (hide spoiler) I do have to say that Veronica Roth has guts, and for that I love her, but I still don't like the way in which the Divergent trilogy ended.

Even although I have issues with most things in Allegiant. I do love the amazing bad-ass fighting and action that Veronica Roth writes about in such an amazing way. Unfortunately, there is so little of this amazingness compared to her other two books.

While the series started off with a beautiful Dauntless beginning in Divergent, the Dauntless way in which it ends in Insurgent and Allegaint makes me want to throw knives at something...

[Nessa Luna]

Actual rating: 4,5.

So, here it is, Allegiant. The final book of the Divergent series. A series that I enjoyed a lot. I don’t remember who recommended the first book to me, but I want to thank them because they have given me one of my favourite book series. (And only Harry Potter and the Hunger Games are the only other series that have earned that title).

Allegiant is told from two point of views, Tris (of course) and Tobias/Four’s. Of course, we were all used to reading stuff from his POV thanks to ‘Free Four’ and ‘The Transfer’. And yes, I liked hearing the story being told from two POV’s, though I personally thought it wasn’t really necessary throughout at least two-thirds the book, because Tris and Tobias were together almost the entire time. I had hoped that they would go their separate ways, that one would stay behind in Chicago (so we would know what was going on the whole time) and the other would go outside of the fence, but they went outside together (which I also understand).

I also found it hard to distinguish Tris from Tobias, because the writing was just the same for both characters, and they almost had the same way of thinking. At some points, I asked myself why Tris would talk about Marcus like that, until I remembered that I was reading from Tobias’ point of view. That was a bit of a pity.

There were a lot of new characters in this book, and I actually found it hard to trust any of them (show spoiler)[except for the characters that were originally from Chicago then, like Amar and George.] (hide spoiler) And I turned out to be right most of the time, so hey it might be good to be suspicious (like Tris is in this book) of certain people. But of course there were new characters that we could trust, and that also made me happy.

Of course, I was happy that some of the old characters came along with Tris and Tobias, and saddened by the deaths that happened, but nothing will sadden me more than that ending. OH MY GOD, THAT ENDING. I have heard a lot of people being angry at Veronica Roth for ending the book like that, but I actually like it. I thought it was very brave. On one side I had expected something like that to happen, on the other side I did not expect it at all.

That did not keep me from crying my eyes out throughout at least the last sixty or fifty pages. A (almost) perfect ending for a perfect series, and oh my gods. I can’t wait for the short Four stories that still have to be released. And though Allegiant has a couple of faults, I still gave it five well-earned stars!