Title: Allegiant
Author: Veronica Roth
Series: Divergent
Other books in this series:
- Divergent (My rating: 9.0)
- Insurgent (My rating: 8.8)
In my review of The House of Hades, I talked a little about how a long wait for a book can change how you read it. The anticipation can change your whole perspective. If the book is not as good as you anticipated, it can seem awful when it's really not. I think Allegiant suffered from that a lot.
I will warn you now. Allegiant is very different from Divergent and Insurgent. There's a lot of changes that may startle diehard fans of the first two. Some of these changes worked, but many fell flat.
The first thing that you notice immediately is the dual perspective. Tris narrates part of the book, and Tobias narrates another. I don't mind dual perspective when it's done well (see Marie Lu's Legend books), but it's REALLY ANNOYING when not (see Matched by Ally Condie). In this case, it's not done well. Since Tris is now the narrator for only half the book, we don't get to see her character develop as much. Too much of it was "off-camera". This is a crucial disappointment towards the end of the book, but I'll talk about that in the spoiler-y section. Now, there were two major pitfalls of having Tobias narrate the other half of the book. The first was that his view on the world was practically the same as Tris. Many people have said that they had to look back at the beginning of the chapter multiple times because they were confused as to who was narrating. I did that multiple times as well. The second is that he such a boring narrator compared to Tris. I just don't think that Tobias is that interesting as a character, period. I frequently found myself waiting impatiently for the parts where Tris narrated. If Roth wanted to do a dual perspective, I think Caleb would be far more interesting. It didn't really need the dual perspective anyway. The book would be far better if Tris just narrated the whole thing.
The story takes place right after the events of Insurgent. Something I loved about Insurgent was that Roth wasted no time on recapping the events of the previous book. The same thing happens in Allegiant. While this is nice, it's also now necessary to reread or at least refresh yourself on the events of the previous two books. I recently reread both, and I would greatly recommend doing so.
In the beginning of Allegiant, Tris, Christina, and Cara are locked up because their role in stealing Edith Prior's video from Erudite headquarters went directly against Evelyn's orders. They get out by blaming everything on Marcus and are free to go. Meanwhile, Evelyn has taken over Chicago. She has eliminated all echoes of the factions. A nice piece of symbolism is there when she forces the former faction members to wear a mixture of clothes from all the factions. A group of former faction members who dislike the rule create a group called the Allegiant, who want to take back Chicago and restore the factions. The group is headed by Tori and former Amity leader Johanna Reyes. The Allegiant reach out to Tris & Tobias, and the two of them attend a super-secret meeting. The Allegiant set two goals: 1) to usurp Evelyn and take back Chicago, and 2) follow Edith Prior's wishes and explore outside the fence. Tris and Tobias join the group that goes out the explore the outside world.
Spoilers – a LOT of them – start now!!!
One of the things that this book does best is reinforce Veronica Roth's message that realistically, your favorite characters don't always make it out in the nick of time. They're not even out of the city yet and BAM!—Tori's dead. It makes it worse when we get out of the city and we find out her brother's still alive—that's just cruel, Roth. :(
I'm getting a little ahead of myself, though. Right now, our narrators are just about to find out what is outside the fence. They'll learn what their society is, how it became so, and why it did. This is a crucial point in the story. Roth can do whatever she wants here. She can create a unique, interesting world that sets Divergent apart, or she can just do a boring, we've-seen-it-before world that's not notable among all of the dystopian books out now. Unfortunately, Allegiant ends up leaning towards the second one.
At the beginning of the book, I was hopeful that Roth would pull it all together. Sure, the beginning focused a little too much on Tris & Tobias's romance. Sure, I did not like the dual perspective. But I was hoping Roth could make a solid story that I would get hooked on, and she didn't really do it here.
See, the magic of Divergent and Insurgent was that Roth's great, fast-paced writing (plus a lot of action) made someone even as OCD as me able to overlook the plot holes. In Allegiant, they're shoved in your face the minute you step outside that fence.
So the premise of this dystopia is that the world went down the toilet because of genetic modification. People tried to genetically modify the human race to be more intelligent, honest, peaceful, selfless and brave. However, people with these genes also became vain, impolite, indifferent, withdrawn, and cruel respectively. Sound familiar, anyone? Soon, big cities became test facilities in which a society of genetically modified persons was created. They would stay in that controlled environment for generations until heredity produces a sufficient amount of their population that was genetically pure, or known to them as Divergent.
Seems simple enough, right? Genetically modified = bad. Divergent = good. But no, apparently Roth can't make up her mind. Now we get into a moral discussion: Are GDs (genetically damaged persons) really that much worse that GPs (genetically pures)? In this dystopian society, GPs are treated as an inferior race. Is this justified, is it going too far, or is it completely immoral? Tris struggles with this in a completely boring way.
Ok. Now, Tobias commits to the GDs and their mission to show the GPs that they are not inferior and stop the cities-turned-test facilities (which would be completely pointless if the GPs aren't inferior). Tris doesn't commit because they have an awful plan, and she tells Tobias this, but he doesn't listen. The plan turns out horribly, and Uriah dies. So, Tris is super-pissed at Tobias—but wait! They reconcile again twenty pages later, so who cares?
Back in Chicago, the Allegiant are about to attack Evelyn and the factionless. The people in charge of the Chicago experiment decide to wipe out the memories of everybody inside the city, because they'll stop fighting, and who cares about the moral value of the Chicagoans, they're GDs! Tris is not happy with this, so her counter-attack is to… wipe out the memories of the experiment people! WTF? I'm sorry, that just doesn't make sense to me.
So now we're nearing the conclusion, and we have the big shocker conclusion: Tris dies. She sacrifices herself for her brother. Now, let me get one thing clear: I don't mind Tris dying. It was a very dauntless (ahem) move on Roth's part to kill off the main character. Tris sacrificing herself for her loved ones is a very good way for er to die. The act in itself is a good effort.
However, the problem is that it doesn't fit into the story that well. Veronica Roth wrote a very interesting blog post explaining exactly why she killed off Tris. You can see it here. She explains that it all begins when Tris's parents sacrifice themselves for her at the end of Divergent. Tris struggles to understand this throughout Insurgent, leading to behavior that is more self-destructive than selfless. In Allegiant, she finally realizes this and her last act, saving her brother, is truly selfless. Now, I think this makes sense. However, the biggest problem is that Roth shouldn't have to tell us this. I learned the rule of "show, not tell" in second grade writing, didn't she? Now, we come back to my problems the dual perspective. Because Tris narrates less than half of the book, we don't get to see this character growth. It's arguably the most important part of the book, and WE DON'T SEE IT. Does this make sense to anyone?
Spoilers end here.
Now it's time to wind this review down. It's taken me weeks to write, so I'll stop here. While this book made me pretty angry about all the things I said above, I still liked it. Roth is a phenomenal writer, and I was addicted to this book every step of the way. Even the bad steps.
Final score: 7.4 out of 10
I just want to say Roth has gotten a lot of hate for killing off Tris, far more than she ever could deserve. I heard she even got death threats! Really, people? Even if the author mass murdered every fictional character in existence, it's not a reason to hate her, let alone send death threats.
If you liked this book, then you would like:
- Legend by Marie Lu
- The Maze Runner by James Dashner
- Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
- Nick
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