I am finally ready to review Allegiant, the final book in Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy. I hate to say this, but I must agree with a lot of readers that Allegiant was disappointing for a lot of reasons, and the death of the main character is not one of them. First of all, I absolutely loved the first book – Divergent. It was fresh, engaging and fun. Insurgent (Book 2) was not as good, but it was ok. It provided additional information about the world and created a nice set up for a highly anticipated finale. Now, come the final installment, and… I just could not get into this book. I got half way through it and then actually abandoned it in favor of reading two other trilogies back to back. That is how uninterested I was in the narrative. First of all, this third book is a massive information dump. We had learned close to nothing about the dystopian world outside of the closed city of Chicago in Book 1. Book 2 provided some answers in the very end, and then in Book 3 we are faced with this massive avalanche of information that is really not that engaging. In addition, the narration is alternated between Tris and Tobias’ POV. But they sounds exactly the same! Without noting the heading of the chapter, you would not be able to tell who is speaking. So as you see I was hugely disappointed in this book before I ever got to the “good part”.
The plot itself has a few flaws: the entire premise that the society is split into genetically pure and genetically damaged seems weak. People seem to be literate, yet, no one has access to historic records, and the GPs are blamed for all the evils. Seems like a pretty weak argument for such a technologically advanced society (my head was spinning from the variety of all the serums!). The narrative actually got better once Tris died. It almost feels like Roth really wanted to kill her off and Tobias’ grief is the only part in this book that felt authentic. I will stop my rambling here because I could go on and on about everything that I did not like about this book. Sometimes it happens with series. This simply was not a good book; not a strong finish at all. So if you are thinking of reading the series, do read Divergent and then proceed with caution. I would not recommend books 2 or 3.
The plot itself has a few flaws: the entire premise that the society is split into genetically pure and genetically damaged seems weak. People seem to be literate, yet, no one has access to historic records, and the GPs are blamed for all the evils. Seems like a pretty weak argument for such a technologically advanced society (my head was spinning from the variety of all the serums!). The narrative actually got better once Tris died. It almost feels like Roth really wanted to kill her off and Tobias’ grief is the only part in this book that felt authentic. I will stop my rambling here because I could go on and on about everything that I did not like about this book. Sometimes it happens with series. This simply was not a good book; not a strong finish at all. So if you are thinking of reading the series, do read Divergent and then proceed with caution. I would not recommend books 2 or 3.
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