Allegiant by Veronica Roth
Allegiant
by Veronica Roth
(Audio)
Soooooooo many people online and in the Carpe Librum swap-bot community especially have given this third book in the Divergent trilogy bad reviews. I was prepared for huge twists to the series or terrible happenings that would make me hate the book as well. I went into this after about a month between the second book and the third, and I was happy to revisit this world and its characters to find out how their stories were to end. As I listened to this book, I kept expecting that moment where the book would turn me off. I waited. And waited. Was this the moment that turned people? How about this? Or this? I spent so much time wondering what people would find so objectionable about this book.
Granted, yes, it was a departure from the setting of the first book. It dealt with some interesting, deep concepts. And, yeah, characters died. It's a war; people get injured or even die--if they didn't, it wouldn't have been as compelling a story at times. But I actually ended up liking this book.
It took me a while to get used to the POV changing from Tris to Tobias and back again every few chapters. But I love Four and it was great getting into his head. People say the writing was terrible, but I thought it was fine; there were some word choices and some scenes I thought were just plain beautiful. And I didn't have a trouble buying into the concept; I'm not a genetic scientist, so it wasn't a problem for me. I was sad to not get a whole book set inside the faction-filled world, but there were enough new ethical quandaries to make me think and entertain me as a reader. It did feel like a much different kind of book... but it was also couched in the familiar and it was familiar solutions to problems that ended up saving the day.
This isn't to say I loved the book. The first is definitely my favorite. But I did certainly enjoy it. I was too busy being curious to be critical. So it ended up feeling to me just like another chapter in a book, another book in a series. What happened happened and I dealt with it. I didn't cry... okay, maybe I teared up slightly during part of the epilogue, but I didn't actually cry. It didn't hit me so hard. In fact, I thought it was kind of... poetic and beautiful.
I also like that the main characters, despite choosing Dauntless, showed so many characteristics of the other factions as well, whether they had an aptitude for them or not. And I liked how the elements of each faction come through so strongly in the big climax of the story. And I like that, in the end, it comes down to people and emotions, not weapons or technology.
Though the book did not have the same feel to me as the first book, I still enjoyed this. Maybe it's because I expected it to be so bad and, instead, it just flowed like the next part of the story after book 2 for me. *shrug*