Allegiant (Divergent #3)
Veronica Roth
Genres: Dystopian, Sci-Fi, Romance
Age Group: Young
Adult
Publication Date: 22nd October 2013
Number of Pages: 526
Source: Bought from Kindle UK Store
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.
Allegiant was one of those books I was super looking forward to reading and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. October came and I had issues though - I hadn’t realised my pre-ordered paperback edition, which matched my other copies, came out September 2014! Seriously, September 2014! Anyways, I cancelled my pre-order and bought the Kindle edition so that I could read it straight away – smart move publishers, make me buy 2 versions of the book! Anyways, once I had Allegiant in my grasp I started to notice that it wasn’t quite the comfortable fit that I had experienced with both Divergent and Insurgent.
Allegiant follows on from the exact point that Insurgent finishes. Tris has broadcast the secret that was hidden by the Abnegation faction - a world beyond the City’s walls which requires their help. The faction world of Chicago has been overthrown and everyone is now neutral, wearing multiple coloured clothing which doesn’t pinpoint their faction choice, and now the factionless are in power, policing everyone’s behaviour. However, not everyone is happy with this new non-factionless city and an unidentified group, the Allegiant, has emerged whose sole aim is to complete the actions given within the broadcast message - leave the city and bring as many Divergent outside as possible. With Tris and Tobias’ previous actions within the City’s recent events, it’s no surprise that they are targeted by the Allegiant revolt. With Tris and Tobias in tow, the Allegiant group leave the city to discover what is on the other side.
I had high anticipations for the final book in the Divergent Trilogy and in some ways my wishes and hopes were met and in other ways I was left feeling numb and slightly disappointed. I purposefully waited a little while to write this review as I wanted to take some time to collect my thoughts. I don’t say that often!
I believe that Allegiant is difficult to review in relation to the other books in the series due to the difference in direction that the story takes and the difference in writing style (dual POVs).
1) Story direction - The revolution in Chicago is over, Jeanine Matthews has been overthrown and the factionless have emerged and ceased control. In terms of anti-new establishment groups, the Allegiant are the only ones hyped up enough to really do anything but they are much more focused on leaving the city and discovering what is on the outside. Hence, the story isn’t concentrated within the world we’ve become accustomed to in Divergent and Insurgent, and in my opinion I missed this world. I missed the constant feeling that Tris needed to watch her every action and thought, and Allegiant just seemed a little actionless because of this. Don’t get me wrong Allegiant has its moments – explosions, attacks and characters to be weary around – but overall the story was just about discovery of the outside world, understanding the outside world’s motives for their experiments and how Tris, Caleb , Tobias and everyone else fits into the grander scheme of things.
2) Dual POV – The writing style of both Tris and Tobias’ POVs was also new to the series within Allegiant and I don’t think it made reading the story easy. Due to the lack of varying locations in Allegiant, being able to easily shift between character’s POV wasn’t simple. I fully understand why it was written in this style, which is due to the ending (coming back to this later), however I was constantly battling with myself and this actually stifled my ability to read and enjoy Allegiant. The dual POV just didn’t quite fit in my opinion.
Moving on to the ending of the novel, Tris’ death – this is main reason I’ve delayed my review for this long because I still haven’t quite decided where I sit with my opinion of the ending. I don’t hate the ending, I feel that it fit with Tris’ character perfectly and certainly provided me with the ‘surprise’ I was hoping for somewhere within Allegiant. I don’t even hate the fact that it was slightly predictable and certainly too heavily hinted at during the final chapters leading up to it. My issue is that I was hoping for a more powerful ending to the series e.g. something that affected the whole of Chicago and the factions. Once Tris’ death was certain, the book just seemed to lose focus and nothing was rounded up as to the possible future of Chicago and the outside world. I think my preference would have been for the book to end with Tris’ death which would at least have kept us guessing as to if she was actually dead or not. Although saying that I did like the Tobias zip line scene but I also could have lived without it. I guess even after writing this paragraph I’m still undecided about my opinion. I guess I’ll need more time and possibly a reread to decide.
Overall Allegiant was an ‘ok’ book to complete the Divergent Trilogy, it compares to Mockingjay in my opinion in the sense that it was my least favourite book in the series and just didn’t add anything new or different to the story. If you’ve read Divergent and Insurgent it’s certainly worth finishing the series but just lower your expectations beforehand so as not to be disappointed.
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