Allegiant (Divergent, #3)

by Veronica Roth

[celinenyx]

Endings aside, I'm disappointed with Allegiant.

This review might contain some spoilers with regard to the middle part, but none regarding the ending.

To be honest I don't remember whether or not Divergent and Insurgent were well-written, language-wise. I only remember that I breezed through them. I also breezed through Allegiant, but man are there some awkward sentences in this book. It's written in dual perspective, but the voices sounded exactly the same. For me this is where the emotional disconnect started, and the rest of the story suffered from that.

After the happenings in Insurgent, Tris and Four venture outside the fence. I was excited for this - how would the rest of the world look? Is it in ruins? Or is it utopia? Turns out, the explanation is rather lame. We barely see anything from beyond Chicago. Our protagonists just walk around talking to people, we get info-dump after info-dump. There are some new conflicts forced on us that don't make any sense. To be honest the worldbuilding in Allegiant is a total bust. There is some mention of a "government", but once you look at the plot closely it falls apart. What happens to the rest of the world? There is not one single person that wants to know what the situation is like outside the US. Really? You're having genetic problems, and you're not interested to see how other countries would deal with this? Nope, let's be cartoony ostriches and stick our head into the sand.

I guess the relationship between Tris and Four is realistic. They've had quite some problems in Insurgent, and they're still feeling the after-shocks of that. To be honest I think they completely lost their chemistry. The kissing couldn't convince me they felt any romantic attraction to each other. It felt more as if they were siblings, not lovers.

Allegiant is a surprisingly boring book. There is action and shooting and uprising after uprising, but maybe as a reader of this series we've just become kind of numb to that. Who cares about yet another rebellion? Loyalties ping-pong everywhere.

The world outside Chicago is a terribly depressing place. I don't think I want to revisit it ever again.