Allegiant  - Veronica Roth

My Rating – 3 Stars

 

*This review is for the final book in the Divergent Series. It WILL contain

spoilers. Proceed with caution.*

 

* BEWARE: THERE BE SPOILERS HERE*

 

Okay, so. It’s been a few weeks. My heart still hurts but I’m finally done processing.
My opinions on this book are split and I don’t want my review to be overshadowed by the ending that tore my heart into a millions pieces and then spit on them. So I am going to break the review into little bits and pieces because I can’t review the book as a whole. I just can’t!

 

The book begins with Tris and company locked up after Evelyn and the factionless have taken over control of the city. Evelyn wants to kill Tris (doesn’t everyone?) for being a traitor.

 

Though Evelyn wants Tobias to break up with Tris, he comes to warn her. Evelyn is going to put her under a truth serum and Tris has to come up with a convincing lie so she can beat it and survive. And she does of course, or we wouldn’t have a 526 page book.

 

After Tris is freed and there is some cute Fourtris stuff where they promise not to lie to each other anymore, the word is spread of an underground resistance group called the Allegiant has formed. They want to go back to the way things where and stay true to the original point of the city.

 

The Allegiant wants Tris in. They want her to leave the city and see what’s beyond the fence. So she gathers up her group and they escape the city, only to find out it’s not exactly like the Edith Prior video said.

 

There is civilization, sort of. They learn that they are an experiment of the government. They are the descendants of genetically damaged people. Long before their city was formed the government isolated genes that made people evil and good and tried to create a perfect race of people. And as we all know from previous books and scifi movies, government experiments always fail and wars happen and the genetically damaged fought against the genetically pure.

 

And that’s about all that happens until the end.

 

The middle of the book is a whole lot of nothin’.

 

So here’s what I didn’t like:

 

Tobias and Tris have zero chemistry in this book, except for the beginning and close to the end right before the big bad thing happens that makes my heart hurt. All they do is fight. Tris is trying to prove she’s right and Tobias is trying to prove he’s right and while they don’t lie to each other anymore they just bicker. By the middle of the book, I was actually hoping they would break up and that was what the terrible ending was.

 

Tobias has no voice and when he does, it’s incredibly whiny. His POV sounds almost exactly like Tris’ (there were several times where I had to flip back to remind myself which POV I was reading) except when he’s moaning about something which is almost always. This is not the voice of Four: Dauntless legend. This is not the voice of the badass character as he was portrayed in the first two books. A lot of terrible things have happened to Tobias and yes I get that, but he’s just so insecure.

 

When he finds out he’s not actually Divergent (genetically pure) and he’s “genetically damaged” he gets angry and stomps off like a child, even though he didn’t even know what genetically damaged meant until this group of perfect strangers told him. Oh no I’m not exactly like Tris, I’m “genetically damaged” even though I have no real understanding of what that means. He only grasps on to the damaged part and thinks something is wrong with him. I thought Tobias was much smarter than that.

 

On the outside world, GDs are treated differently and more like a lower class of people but Tobias has no knowledge of that. Most people didn’t even know he was supposedly Divergent, they thought he was awesome because he was a badass that only had four fears. So it kind of annoyed me that he got so upset over something he had no knowledge of.

 

And the whole Nita and Tobias plot was pointless and stupid. I feel like the only purpose it served was to kill Uriah and make Tobias feel even worse.

 

I hated the experiment/genetically damaged/genetically pure plot. The whole city was an experiment and this government agency watched over it and it just felt like a big letdown. All these people were dying inside the city and the government agency just sits around and watches. A lot of it didn’t make any logical sense and there were a lot of loose ends. They had the science to isolate genes but not the science to fix them?

 

The Edith Prior thing is not explained enough for me, she’s barely mentioned at all so that pretty much makes the last half of the second book pointless.

 

Uriah’s death. Talk about pointless. The only purpose his death served was to make Four feel bad and emotionally screw him over.

 

Tris’ death. Really. REALLY? Who kills the protagonist of their series?! Yes, I understood the ending (omg mini rant – I very literally despise that “you don’t like it because you must not have understood it” argument. No. NO.). Yes, I read Roth’s blog post about the ending. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. It’s her series, she is free to do what she wants but I don’t agree that was the only way it could have ended. It didn’t have to end with Tris and Four married and children and living happily ever after. It could have just ended with them alive and together.

 

But here is the main reason I didn’t like it. Because it royally screws Tobias over. Can the poor guy get any happiness? Does he have to be so emotionally damaged? As we see from his POV, he may be a badass but inside he’s just a lost little boy that wants someone to love him and not leave him. It takes over two years for him to be ready enough to have a funeral for Tris. Though I was feeling a little TobiasxChristina vibe, I doubt he will ever love someone like he loved Tris. My poor, poor Tobias.

 

Did Caleb learn ANYTHING?!

 

Things I liked:

 

I liked the beginning of the book. I had high hopes going in. It felt very much like the other two books. It didn't start going downhill (for me anyway) until they left the city. 

 

Tobias. Yes he was a whiny little lost boy but I can’t hate him! I wanted to snuggle him. Especially at the end when it becomes painfully clear just how much he loves Tris. And that he noticed her when he was still in Abnegation.

 

The FourTris cuteness at the beginning and towards the end.

 

Tris’ death. Whaaa? I know what you’re thinking, “Umm, I thought you didn’t like it?” Well I don’t. But it’s a testament to Roth’s writing and creation of Tris that I can feel so distraught over a character’s death. I actually felt like I lost a friend.

 

Okay, this review is turning into a novel so I’ll end with this. I felt that compared to the other books in the series, this one was sub par. I felt the explanation of everything was very lackluster.

 

I didn’t hate the book; I don’t hate the series now because of how it ended. I love the series. I love Tris and Tobias and Christina and everyone else. But I wasn’t so impressed by the last book.