Allegiant
by
Veronica Roth
Title: Allegiant (Divergent #3)
Author: Veronica Roth
Publisher: Harper Collins
(Don't) Buy This Book: Amazon
Allegiant picks up where Insurgent left off. Tris and Four now know that the city is only there, they are only there because generations ago they were placed there by whatever and whoever is outside the city. Now they want to do what Edith Prior has asked of them, leave the city to help those who are outside. But with Evelyn trying to take control of the city and get rid of the factions for good, and an uprising beginning to overthrow her it may be harder then they think.
Hmmm, where do I begin. I am not quite sure how to put the disappointment I feel into words. I managed to read Allegiant without seeing any spoilers. Don't get me wrong, I had heard people were less than happy, or infuriated by the ending but that was all. So I was expecting to get to the end and be shocked, upset and maybe annoyed. What I wasn't expecting was to be so bored by the end that I wouldn't actually care how it ended as long as it just ended. When it did it just felt like FINALLY!
Divergent earned a 5/5 review from me and instantly became a favourite of mine, so it is actually gutting to be so disappointed by it's conclusion. The blurb/synopsis/summary alone gets to me now. It talks of how it is told from a "riveting dual perspective" and that it brings the Divergent series to "a powerful conclusion while revealing secrets of the dystopian world". Wrong, all wrong.
Let's start with the whole "riveting dual perspectives". When I heard that I would finally get Four's point of view, I was sooooooo excited. Four is my favourite character and I absolutely love him. So I couldn't wait for kick-ass Fours perspective on things. Sadly though, Four's voice and narrative was the exact same as Tris'. So there was no individual personality in it at all, if I had to put the kindle down half way through a chapter, when I picked it up again I had absolutely no idea which character was narrating until they encountered one another. This was unbelievably frustrating but also a huge let down. Why give me dual narratives and perspectives when they are basically the same?
Also why turn one of my all time favourite male leads into a fumbling, confused, scared little boy who just needs mummy to love him. Four, the same guy who confronted his fears over and over again, but now he is going to act like Tris, making stupid, irrational decisions and basically getting on my nerves.
Allegiant didn't have to be some amazing, epic conclusion but could something, anything happen in the 500+ pages that was actually worth reading. That's really not that much to ask for, seriously. I am disappointed more in myself, that after the first disappointing 100 pages I actually continued on. I subjected myself to hours of boredom. But hey, along the way I did discover the cure for insomnia, so that's won win.
I feel like I am ranting more than anything but I can't help myself. Let's break some of the disappointment down!
Dual narratives: were basically the exact same, I could quite easily confuse the two. If I am being told I am going to get a dual narrative than I am going to expect one. Not just Tris or Four at the beginning of each chapter, because that was the only difference.
"revealing the secrets": Okay another huge problem I had with this was how it answered all the questions the last two books brought up. It didn't, much. That's not to say it didn't have explanations, it's just that they either didn't make sense or I didn't really understand why they mattered. There were so many holes in them it was actually laughable.
Nothing happens: This book has the amazing ability of tricking you into thinking that something is happening. It isn't. It's basically 450 pages of characters talking about everything that is going to happen, but it doesn't. Not until the last 20 pages or so and then it's just rushed and by then I didn't really care.
It's the same storyline I read in the last book: Seriously, it was. All that has changed is the names of the fighting groups and the uprising. I wanted an exciting conclusion, something original that felt as amazing as Divergent did. But this fumbled along like it never really knew where it was headed. I am just so confused by the whole thing. If anyone can shed light on what the point of this book was, please enlighten me!
The end: Everyone seemed so angry by this I was surprised by how much I DIDN'T CARE. I literally just wanted it to end. I was so unbelievably bored by the end, I was in a care coma. All my feels were gone and I couldn't have cared less about anything or anyone in this book. Seriously, I think she could have killed every single character in this book and it wouldn't have bothered me. Mainly because to me, this book never happened.
I loved, loved, LOVED Divergent, such a great start to a series and Insurgent was also a good book, a solid sequel. It is so disappointing to find that the EPIC FINAL was just a regurgitated version of the same old story lines we have seen in the others books, it's just that the names of the fighting groups changed. YAWN!
I will treat Allegiant the same way I treat the last series of Dexter or the ending to Mass Effect 3 - as if it NEVER happened. Because we as readers, viewers and gamers deserved more, it's as simple as that. We deserved more than a regurgitated storyline, zero character development and one epic let down of an ending.
0/5 Stars
It gets no stars because it honestly didn't earn any. This book treated me like I was stupid, like all it's readers were stupid in fact and we wouldn't recognise that it's the same old storyline just with a few name changes. The ending seemed like it was forced, overly dramatic to make up for the fact that the rest of the book was lacking in any kind of action.
Note:
It is really hard to explain all the reasons I hated this book with no spoilers. So for once I will be posting a spoiler filled, point by point explanation of why I didn't find any enjoyment in this book. That will be up within the next few days.
I completely agree, there are so many problems with this book: the lack of differences in the point of views, the holes in the plot and the fact the characters did a complete 180 in a single book. Also, how is this story good for young adults and teens? The end of the story shows all but one of the "bad" characters surviving and continuing on and only a fraction of the "good" characters surviving. We lost all but Tobias, Christina, Cara and Zeke from the first book. Yet Marcus, Evelyn, Caleb, David and Peter survive. What does that teach our youth, that the good die young, evil will always survive? Tris's "sacrifice" was unnecessary in the story line she created, had Caleb sacrificed his life, his character may have been redeemed. Also, in the plot Ms. Roth created what would it have mattered if she wiped the counsel at this one location, there were several others with the same serums, the same problems and they would not be affected. One more thing we are expected to swallow is that the man who is inoculated against every other serum fails to make sure he is immune from a memory serum that can be released against the whole complex? Sorry, too many holes for me to see the story as beautiful in anyway.
ReplyDeleteI am really glad to find more people who didn't like this book. I can't actually comprehend how it is getting 5* reviews! Nothing ever seems to be explained properly, nothing at all and when it is 'explained' it doesn't make any sense.
DeleteI hated the 180 character changed as well, just one more thing that made me ridiculously annoyed with this book. Everyone seems to go on about how brave Roth was for what she did, but as I detail in ridiculously lengthy detail in the spoiler free blog, I do not honestly understand how any of it was brave. It seems she did it all for shock value, Tris' death just did not make sense and I think Caleb finally being able to redeem himself would have made a much more satisfying ending to me.
Don't get me started on the serums, the go to answer for everything in this book! I'm not sure what she was thinking when she wrote this book, quite clearly she wasn't.
I was so detached from this book by the end that I didn't even register the fact that David didn't inoculate himself from the memory serum! Ha, just one more thing to add to the list.