Laura’s Review of Allegiant (Divergent #3) by Veronica Roth

If you like the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Matched by Ally Condie, then you love this book!!!

Basic Summary:   Once Choice will define you.

What if your whole world was a lie?

What if a single revelation – like a single choice – changed everything?

What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered—fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal.  So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready.  Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.

But Tris’ new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind.  Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless.  Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves.  And once again, Trist must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature-and herself- while facing impossible choice about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

Told from a riveting dual perspective, Allegiant, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the Divergent series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.

“I thought that ‘Divergent’ explained everything that I am and everything that I could be.  Maybe I was wrong.”

What I Love About This Book:  First off I am so happy to have finally been able to get my hands on the conclusion of this series.  The Insurgent ending dropped a HUGE bomb that kind of answered why this entire society exists in the first place, but at the same time plunging each of every member of this city into a world of lies. 

          I love that this book goes back and forth from Tris’ POV and Tobias’, because I love me some Four and I get plenty of him in this book.   I can’t enough of Tris and Four together and it’s so great in this book they have more “alone” time, and in the beginning of the book kind of talk about sex and where they both stand on the subject.  It’s great that they still have stolen moments for themselves and you get plenty of that in this book.

        

          I also like that this series kind of explains how American went from what we currently live in, to a destroyed and different kind of society that exists in this series.  The Hunger Games didn’t really do that, you knew in the Hunger Games that they were in America, and the Capital was around the Rockies, but you never had an explanation as to how the districts were formed and why.  This book kind of offers an explanation of how The United States was ultimately destroyed and that this world that Tris and the others now exist in.  

          I have always said that The Hunger Games are the modern day Lord of the Flies, but I kind of feel that this series is more.  The central theme in this last book to me seems to be about nature vs. nurture.  Are people bad because of their genetics, or is there something in the environment, some type of experience that makes them bad?  That is a constant question that is swimming around in Tris’ head as well as Tobias, and the new environment they are in kind of falls on both sides of this argument. 

          By the time I ended this book I was crying like a girl who got stood up on prom!  The author took a huge risk going this route with the ending I have much respect for Veronica Roth for maybe going against the norm in that way.  I loved the last message of the book, what is says about humanity, about love, about friendship, and about healing.  This book was gritty, depressing, inspiring, dramatic, heartfelt, and so so so much more and Veronica Roth, thank you for sharing this story with us. 

“That internal war doesn’t seem like a product of genetic damage—it seems completely purely human”

Cons:  For the book being the last one in this series, I felt that there wasn’t enough action.  For some time I didn’t feel there was tons of forward movement, and for several chapters I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and then nothing really huge happened.  Also because there is nothing happening for some time I can’t really scope out what Tris’ future will be like.  There is no real direction I see her going in for quite some time throughout this book, there was no ultimate end goal for her for the majority of the book.

          At about 75% through I felt like there was no real direction going on with these characters.  I still didn’t understand what the ultimate end goal was for these people, or where they would all land.  I get the whole, trading one dictatorship for another theme going on but there is no direction for these characters.  I would’ve liked to have seen an end goal earlier on in the book, but after finishing it all up I get why the author went in this direction.  The ending is VERY bittersweet, and stands to all teach us a lesson in humanity.

Overall:  Like many dystopian societies there is always an underlying political message about today’s society.  This series is no different, and within in Allegiant our own society’s issues are very much reflected throughout this book.  Although for a good part of the book, nature vs. nurture seems to be front and center, the book also addresses how many people in society view the poor.  Through what this book calls the “genetically pure” versus “genetically damaged” , where the genetically pure view the genetically damaged as people who can’t help but somewhat barbaric that they create their circumstances of being this way and don’t deserve the government’s support and help.  I think it’s a good lesson to learn while reading this book, of where you might fall on social issue like welfare and health insurance.  Dystopian series have a way of really cracking open society’s current problems and showing the extremes of these problems in a broken down violent world, really making the reader think.  This is something I love about dystopian societies, being a Political Science major, you always think about the world around and series like these really shine a light on stuff I’ve always been interested in. 

          There is very much a strong message of what the world is made of, what kind of humans exist in this world, and maybe sometimes picking the better of two evils  is the only choice you have left.  The author took a big leap at the end of this book writing it the way she did.  I applaud Veronica Roth for choosing to go the way she obviously wanted to.  I am ecstatic about the ending of course not, but I appreciate its uniqueness and it certainly does make this series stand out from the rest.