Allegiant (Divergent, #3)

by Veronica Roth

[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.