Friday 6 March 2015

Allegiant by Veronica Roth | Book Review



Disclaimer: this review was written as soon as I finished the book and so may not be fully coherent (there was just too much emotion).

I don’t even know where to begin with this. Allegiant is the 3rd instalment and conclusion in the Divergent series. For those of you who have been living under a rock, Divergent tells the story of Tris Prior, a girl born into a society divided into factions that are separated out according to personality type. Tris, however, doesn’t fit into any faction; she is known as Divergent. And the story pretty much unravels from there. The second book, Insurgent, was fast paced and told the story of the aftermath of Erudite’s mass killing of the people of Abnegation. In the final pages, we were left with the knowledge that the outside world is ‘waiting for the Divergent’ to come and rescue them
And so here we are. I had this book for so long that I had to actually reread Insurgent before eventually diving back into the world of Factions (or lack of oooh spoilers)


Different from the first two books, Allegiant is told through the dual perspective of Tris and Tobias, which at first, I was really excited for (because Tobias, I mean come on). However, having now read the end, I see why you did that Veronica you sneaky sneak. Also, at times during the middle section, the voices didn’t seem especially distinct, and I had to keep flicking to the beginning of the chapter to see if it was Tobias or Tris speaking. Saying that, it still worked brilliantly, and I loved that we could finally get an insight to Tobias and his reason behind doing certain things that Tris could never justify or get her head around. I’m now gonna have to get my hands on Four (book and character).

The plot was a lot less confusing than Insurgent I thought, which after reading one right after the other, was sort of refreshing. However, I feel like it lagged slightly in the middle when they were hanging around at the Bureau – not much seemed to be happening, which felt strange given that they had just entered a completely new world. Saying this however, it did give room for a lot more character development, or should I say character conclusions (I should not).

If you haven’t read it, I suggest you stop reading now. Really, you shouldn’t be reading this anyway because I am never trustworthy to not include spoilers, get out of here!

Right, now I can try and peel my brain to try and describe the emotion that I’m currently feeling. Of course it was Tris. I had my mind set that it was going to be Tobias that was killed; but of course it was Tris. The way they addressed that this wasn’t like last time; it wasn’t like her walking head first into the erudite compound ready to die. It was a touching death, well written and just so god damn sad. The ending was solid, especially with the zip lining and the symbolism and the parallels and SO MUCH SADNESS.

Also, did we ever find out what happened with the other experiments? Were they shut down too? Or were they allowed to start again, like Chicago? Also, surely there are other people running the other experiments? And what’s the deal with the rest of the world???? So yeah, there are a few unanswered questions, but not so mind pressing and nagging that I won’t be able to sleep at night. In fact, some of the unanswered questions allow for endless possibilities which I quite enjoy.

To sum up, holy shit oh wow what a final conclusion.

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