I’m beginning to feel like I’m stuck in this vortex of young adult trilogies that start out great then just peter out into a fizz of disappointment. I finished Allegiant roughly a week and a half ago and I’m finally starting to get my thoughts together on the book. While reading it, a few different themes definitely popped into my head…



Allegiant picks up pretty much where Insurgent left off. After the revelations at the end of the Insurgent, Evelyn takes over and disbands the factions. In an effort to try and rid their world of control, she instead just creates more. Tris and the others don’t really agree with disbanding the factions or Evelyn’s leadership in general, and they eventually find a way to leave the city. On the way, they make shocking discoveries about how the world came to its current state. When they leave, they meet what’s left of the US government. They are told that many years ago, the government was practicing eugenics “became interested in enforcing certain desirable behaviors in citizens.” (p 121, 2013 HarperCollins first edition hardback) Eventually, there was a big war between the people who were deemed “Pure” and those said to be genetically “damaged.” It destroyed nearly everything, leaving in its wake the world which Tris and the others encounter outside the city. They are told that after the war, the government started experimenting to reverse the genetic fiasco they had created. One of those experiments included their own city, and they discover that they have been watched their entire lives as part of that. Basically, they isolated these populations to create more “Divergent” people – or those with “Pure” genes, that could help heal humanity. Each of the isolated cities had different social experiments going on – factions in some, strict rules in others.

At this point all I can think about is Fallout.



C’mon, Vaults, f*cked up government-funded social experiments?? Anyone? OK maybe I’m just really pumped about Fallout 4… Anyhow…

Here’s what I liked about the book:

Roth included themes of forgiveness. I can appreciate when authors are not cookie-cutter about "good" and "evil." Where characters who are evil are only ever evil, or characters who are good are only good. In real life, there are many shades of gray to “good” and “evil.” And some people deserve forgiveness or redemption.

Another thing she did right was writing about grief, and how people deal with it. In my edition of Insurgent, there were some extras in the back where she admitted she hasn’t dealt with grief herself, so writing about it for her was difficult. But I think she accurately portrayed how it feels and how a person deals with it.

Aaand here’s what I didn’t like:

Tris and Tobias’s relationship. It has honestly driven me crazy since Insurgent. I could not get on board with the idea that they had this perfect relationship; something that many of the characters comment on in several instances. All they do in the last two books is bicker and fight with each other. In my eyes, there seems to be no trust between them, which is admittedly the most important part of any relationship… so I am not seeing how their relationship was supposed to be so amazing. Also, they live in a death-ridden, dystopian world. Why do they want to spend so much time mad at each other when either of them could drop dead at any minute?? Why????

Little to no character development. The characters hardly change at all from the previous two novels. Because of the lack of character development, I had a hard time keeping track of which person was which during the story. I found that I wasn’t interested or invested in them at all to begin with. Even my interest in Tris and Tobias at this point in series was very minimal. They had begun to get on my nerves.

The story drug on and felt predictable. There are a LOT of slow parts in Allegiant. Much of downtime that occurred between the action in the novel felt… unnecessary. Probably because things like character development were not being used. Additionally, there were lots of attempts throughout the book to try and “surprise” us, but each time it just felt predictable. A lot of the ideas and storyline could be guessed at based on what one usually expects to happen in other young adult/dystopian novels. Moreover, the general idea of the story didn’t really feel believable to me to begin with. The whole idea of the factions always seemed silly to me. There was never really anything to force these people to stay in their factions. Yes there were the serums, propaganda… but honestly, it took them that long to rebel against the factions? There is no roaming, strong police presence like, say, in 1984, so I had a hard time believing so many people would go with that lifestyle for such a long time. When they finally get out of the city and find out what’s happening in the outside world… it still does not feel plausible. It felt silly and unscientific, which made it boring in the long run.

THE ENDING. Ok, I get how Tris’s death was supposed to be all heroic, and that she was basically being a martyr… but it just felt cheap to me. It felt like Roth wanted to kill off her main character to make the story “different.” It felt like a weak attempt at a plot twist that really just made me want to throw the book across the room. We have this buildup throughout the whole series about how amazing and powerful and unique Tris is, thinking that she has this amazing destiny, but she just gets killed. Plus I think in general, I get a little grumpy when so much of our emotions and time gets invested in a character, and they get carted out with a cheap death. I had a hard time finishing the book after Tris died… I mostly felt like, “Welp, I’ve made it this far… might as well finish it.”

To sum things up… I would probably still recommend Divergent to people who really enjoy young adult fiction. But I honestly, don’t really see it being worth it to finish the series. I enjoyed Insurgent slightly more than Allegiant, but I still felt myself feeling annoyed and bored throughout it as well. If you’re one of those people that really needs to finish something you’ve started… yes, read the last two books. Otherwise… find another series to devote your time on. ( )

Representation: N/A
Trigger warnings: Military violence and war themes, explosions, physical assault and injury, self-sacrifice and death
Score: Five out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.

What a disappointment. Again...

I wanted to read Allegiant to give Veronica Roth one last chance to redeem herself after Insurgent underwhelmed me. I enjoyed Divergent, so what happened, and how did she come to this point? I picked it up and glanced at the blurb, making it seem intriguing, but when I closed the final page, I didn't enjoy it.

It starts (more like finishes) with Tris still living in Chicago in the aftermath of the events that happened in Insurgent when she discovers something extraordinary. She comes across information that the world is not what she thinks it is. It's no longer a place divided by the Divergent, those with multiple traits, and the five factions without, like the Dauntless, instead, the Divergent are better off since the government considers them genetically pure while the faction members are genetically damaged. Really? That does not sound like genetics and more like a personality issue, which didn't improve the worldbuilding and instead made the narrative do a 180. The characters are hard to relate since they lack character development, the plot is not engaging enough and the pacing is slow in the first 450 pages due to the filler ones. Roth could've removed those to make Allegiant more engaging and ensure every page counts. Roth sends a message through Allegiant's implicit theme that having many traits is beneficial but other issues didn't make it clear and that was in the background. The conclusion is faster paced as another battle occurs, but Tris sacrifices herself in the middle of all that, but what for? I don't get it. That peters out Allegiant. ( )

I'm so upset about how it ends. Honestly I cried. It was a good ending but not how I wished it did. ( )

Just like Insurgent, I don't think this book is absolutely horrendous, but it's still pretty bad overall. It has so many problems it's hard to even remember them all. However, there were some parts that I thought were genuinely good scattered throughout this book. They are pretty few and far in between, but they are still there.

Everyone's already talked about how the world-building completely falls apart in this book, and I agree. The venture into the outside world actually makes the world feel smaller and less important than it already is. We learn practically nothing about what's happening outside the United States. Heck, we don't even learn much about what's going on in the United States either! All we learn is that a tiny section of the government (called the Bureau) is involved in solving genetic damage by placing people in various cities in the United States as experiments. That's it. Not only is this an extremely disappointing reveal due to how dumb and anticlimactic it is, but it makes the United States seem like it barely has any order to it all. To me, it always seemed like the people in the Bureau were just fucking around, enjoying life while the rest of the world suffers. They're not doing jack shit in the grand scheme of things, when you really think about it. They're just... there. Who's in charge of these idiots? What is this world, dude? It feels like it barely has any order to it. That's just how I personally feel about it. If you disagree, that's fine.

Another thing I dislike about this book (as well as the whole franchise in general) is the amount of characters introduced. Good lord. The amount of main/side characters who are at least somewhat important to the plot is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but you can't expect me to give two shits about even 50% of these guys when I know next to nothing about them. They keep getting introduced left and right, and they leave no impression on me. They're so unbelievably bland and uninteresting.

I also thought the resolution to the story was extremely underwhelming and not thorough in the slightest. Basically, Tris and the other protagonists find out that the Bureau is planning on resetting the experiments by wiping the people's memories clean in order to keep them in order. Because of that, the protagonists decide to reset EVERYONE'S memory in the Bureau apart from a couple guys who will teach them basic history and remove their prejudice against genetically damaged people. This brings me back to my point about how small this world is. If only a handful of people can control the knowledge of an entire government agency without the government noticing or without much rebellion, then this world ends up feeling even less exciting.

Also, the rebellion of the protagonists against the Bureau goes on WAY too smoothly. Like, these guys are sneaking around the Bureau, getting their hands on various tools, weapons, and serums without anyone noticing. Again, what the fuck is the Bureau doing? Why do they not have stricter security, especially knowing the fucked up propaganda they spew about a vast portion of the people working for them (the genetically damaged)?

As I mentioned earlier, there were some moments throughout this book that did make feel something, and I thought Tris's sacrifice in the end was a pretty good way for her character to go out, but none of that alleviates the emptiness I feel when I read this book. I don't get excited or enthralled by the world, the characters, the storyline, or the lore. It's just... meh. That's the best way I can really describe this whole series. It's not abysmally awful, but it doesn't really do anything for me. ( )

Loved it! One of the few series I have ever read where the second and third books are as good or even better than the first one. I think Allegiant, the third and final book in the series, was my favorite. This will definitely be a young adult book I recommend to my students. ( )