Allegiant by Veronica Roth
Goodreads
Release Date: October 22nd 2013
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Series: Divergent #3
To be honest, I wasn’t as excited about Allegiant as most people due to a lot of mixed feelings about Insurgent. I was hopeful that Veronica Roth could pull it together and wrap it up nicely, but like a lot of people, I was a bit disappointed with the last installment. I haven’t been reading any reviews, so I’m not sure if it’s for the same reasons, but I kind of think it might not be.
I feel like it’s been long enough since the book came out, and most people looking at reviews at this point have probably read it already or want to know what happens. So, I’m going to include spoilers. Reader beware: spoilers ahead!
I think that for me, the whole trilogy just feels really disjointed. Sometimes in Allegiant, it didn’t feel very tied to the rest of the story. I almost feel like Divergent was just too closed off from the other books. There’s a whole bigger picture, and I think if the idea of something large scale had been introduced earlier, it would have been easier to follow along. I get that it was supposed to be a surprise for everyone, but after finishing the whole series, Divergent just feels so separate.
There were parts of Allegiant that I liked, and there were parts that just didn’t do anything for me. Sometimes, I felt like nothing was happening at all, and I was bored. It has action in it, but it didn’t feel very productive to me. I might actually have not finished, except I didn’t want to be spoiled (I ended up getting spoiled anyway, but what I learned didn’t surprise me at all).
Tris’s death wasn’t surprising to me at all. I really expected someone to die, and it made sense for it to be her. I was really upset (I cried pretty hard, not going to lie) about the death of a character I was kind of feeling like I didn’t know that well anymore, but I wasn’t angry about it. It totally fits her character, and it fits the attitude of the book. The main problem I had with her death was why she did it, or why anyone had to die at all. The solution felt pretty ridiculous. Nobody above the people there knew what was going on and would figure out that the memories of important people running a whole experiment had been wiped? I have problems with a lot of the serums, and the memory serum is a huge one. I feel like the serums are just easy fixes to force situations.
I was disappointed with Tobias/Four. His whole crisis in this book was lame. His complete insecurity felt out of character. He was always the one that didn’t want to be just one thing, not just fearless, so I’m not sure why he was so set and focused on the discovery. How the non-divergent people were treated outside of the city was awful, but I expected more from him than whining about it and just falling into random schemes without thinking. The extreme highs and lows of the relationship were jarring. There were moments between them that I felt were sweet, but the rest of the weak story overshadowed it. The fact that she dies so quickly after they make up is frustrating. I kind of liked the ending, with Tobias moving past everything and working for a better city.
As a whole, I didn’t hate or love it. I hated and loved pieces of it. I am disappointed with the book as a whole. There were other things that bugged me about it, but I failed to take notes or write this in a timely matter, so this is what I held onto, about a month later! I will probably revisit the series again. I definitely plan on seeing the movie. I am also interested to see what else Roth writes.
A Blighted One 
I agree so much that the series feels very disjointed. Introducing the genetics issue in book three was so far out of left field that it just didn’t make any sense, and while I understand Roth wanted it to be a surprise and a big twist, just throwing it in like that isn’t very effective at all. Really there should have been some foreshadowing throughout Divergent and Insurgent.
Oh, and Tobias! So frustrating! I really didn’t like him in here. Plus, his and Tris’s narratives were too identical. I had to keep flicking back to the beginning of the chapter to remind me whose chapter I was reading.
Yes, I think if she would have had a bigger picture of where the series was going from the beginning, she could have made it so much better. It just feels messy and unplanned.
And ugh, yes, their narratives were so close. Altogether a frustrating read!
I liked the direction the series went as a whole, the big picture of it, but I feel like a lot of the details could have been made stronger. And I also wasn’t surprised at all by Tris’s death.
Stronger details and better planning would have definitely helped the story!
I was really disappointed by this one, too. I think you articulated all of my frustrations perfectly. I loved Divergent and I feel like Insurgent and Allegiant robbed me of that love the more I read because I learned how little I really knew while reading Divergent. I rarely seem to love the final installment in a trilogy, but this one, like you mentioned, actually bored me at times. I was actually happy about Tris’ death because it meant there was something seriously climactic that happened haha! Sadly, this book felt like a paycheck to me; Roth knew she was getting paid so she just spit out a finale knowing what the end game was but not caring how she got there. How do you feel about the Tobias novellas? They frustrate me so much because they feel like a paycheck, too. Maybe I’m just weird though. I would probably try to milk something for all it’s worth myself though, so I shouldn’t judge haha! 😉
It did feel like a paycheck! It’s hard, I feel like a lot of authors scale back caring after they get mot still! I know they have to detach a bit, but still! I feel like she needed a better plan and more help or something! She wanted something too complex. I’ve only read Free Four which was cool because it was insight and free, but the novellas definitely seem like a drive for money, which feels tacky. If they actually added something to the story, it might be different. I’m not actually a fan of novellas in general, though. And yeah, I would definitely try to milk anything too! But as a reader it sucks, haha!