Veronica Roth

Again, I debated if this third book in the series was worth reading (not into romance), but I went ahead. Wow! Surprise! Plot twist! I'm all in on this one!

What really makes this personally meaningful is that I just finished reading the academic "The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code : Human Rights in Human Experimentation" edited by George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin. I picked that up because of my interest in violations of the Nuremberg Code with regard to the politically motivated show more policies around 2019 Covid. Put Allegiant, "The Nazi Doctors," and the movie GATTACA together, and try having a thoughtful discussion about personal integrity, the intersection of health, medicine as an industry, human psychology, politics and propaganda, AND the policies that hurt so many people apart from any virus. Line these nonfiction and fiction resources up and soberly consider the ramifications of elites deciding the fates of millions.

Fiction is the sandbox where we get to ask "what if?" and offer possible answers to that question. Allegiant is an important contribution to the discussion around the ways those with means and power may sort, divide, and limit those people with less agency.

Some themes touched on in this series: human psychology (Tris is so obviously young!), growth and development of the intellect and emotions, the capacity of the human spirit to overcome adversity, the ethics surrounding the pursuit of knowledge and technology, the extremes of virtue become vice, what makes life meaningful and gives it purpose, what power should elites have over others (with the best of intentions!).

Through Tris, we ask questions about God, family and friendship, and the self, guilt and forgiveness. This is no moralistic story, but what makes it a "good" read is that it touches on real issues, real dilemmas, real pain in betrayal and disappointment in our parents, siblings, authority, God, ourselves. It would be so easy to simply sort people, judge them, and that would be the end of them. This is one of the biggest areas of growth for Tris.

There are no "answers," like in real life. But to ask the questions and be willing to learn, contemplate, and change our minds, to grow in humility, giving grace to ourselves and others are important concepts visited again and again in the broken world of Divergent. show less

already, this book has put me off. she’s now switching between Tris and Tobias like a Game of Thrones knock-off. the previous two books have just been from Tris’s point of view, why muddle us all up and do this back and forth all of a sudden? again, it shows poor writing skills and advice given her from her editors. it’s jarring and makes no sense to change the narrative at this late date. the view from Tobias doesn’t quite work either. she feels like she’s fumbling and having a show more very hard time with his motivations and perceptions. he’s not three dimensional or very believable compared with Tris’s rich inner monologues.

and, of course, the sickly sweet descriptions of teen lust are a bit much but it’s to be expected.

then the book lost me. “genetic purity”? my hackles are raised and i am feeling the willies. this is now the land of “I think Roth didn’t consult with one scholar or scholarly paper.” they set people inside cities as “experiments” to “heal” (yes, that’s the word used) their genetic code from the “damage” done by previous attempts at EUGENICS.

Roth also set up a false equivalency and dichotomy where if we lose the “murder gene” we also lose compassion, if we lose the “intelligence gene,” we lose humility. really. if this doesn’t prove that Roth is anti-intellectual, i’m not sure what will.

i do not think that such a population could sustain itself genetically or socially with even more outside support than is shown. people would have wanted to go outside the fences long before this and no plausible mechanism for keeping them inside is shown. compare the reason in the Village- whatever you think of the movie, the motivation for staying within the boundaries seems valid and believable but even that system was not sustainable. being in Chicago and having access to some very tall buildings would also mean that they would be able to see miles and thus other settlements and towns outside the city walls, ESPECIALLY THE BUREAU’S HEADQUARTERS AT O’HARE!!! this is NEVER addressed. ever.

i also don’t believe that the group that left the city would see things as they do, trusting everyone at ex-O’Hare as they do. i think that as soon as they start hearing the “true” history of themselves and learning about the world outside the city, they would immediately think they were all Erudite or Erudite-like and be a bit more troublesome to their hosts. i also think that the people outside the city would have prepared contingencies for people moving from the city to the outside- protocols that would help them adjust. after all, aren’t they supposed to be masters of social manipulation? even the run-of-the-mill social scientists i know would understand that people walking out of a completely artificial environment like the one depicted would need help transitioning. just like prisoners do when they come out of jail, just like Neo in the Matrix, just like soldiers coming home from war. Roth’s ignorance is becoming painfully evident and ridiculous.

near the end of this last book, her world-building begins to get better but it’s still got large holes in it. having a mechanism by which we the readers could have somehow gotten hints about all this stuff going on in the first book would have been wonderful. her manufactured dramas, too, still chafe but i’ve grown a bit of a callous from them. at least she’s attempting to have things make sense on some level. like the idea of “genetic damage” and “purity” is now being explored to their fullest. once again, she seems to have come through the previous book, had someone sit down with her and “umm, look. there are some problems with this,” and then she scrambles to retrofit plotlines to make everything better. doesn’t quite work.

what ends up happening is that she ping-pongs us between seeming good guys (or ideas) turning into bad guys (or ideas) who then turn out to be good guys but then turn out to be bad guys... everyone from the city first believes this person and then they are told by someone else that it's all bunk and that they should believe what they are saying- and they DO... all around the mulberry bush...

finally, there are lots of pointless deaths of fringe characters that we don’t care about because she hasn’t developed them and the pointless death of a major character that seems utterly avoidable. that is, why did they all settle on just that one plan from the get-go? there was absolutely NO OTHER way to get into the area they needed into? i do not believe it. i do not believe they wouldn’t have at least discussed trying something else. we are manipulated into a tear-jerking ending but my awareness of that manipulation made it utterly contrived and sneer inducing. hey, i must be divergent where this series of books is concerned!

and the ending itself? wow. the resolution of the story is so convenient and easy and contrived (have i used that adjective before?) that it’s really just magical. the conversion of Four’s mother, the ease with which the rebels led by Tris accomplish their goals, the reprehensible solution to the problem of the Bureau, and the totally and absolutely unbelieveable way the government just lets them get away with this stuff.

it definitely had lots of potential but only seen backwards to front. front to back, the series is a quick-cobbled rush of adolescent fantasies that realizes it needs to do more and more as its own plotline shows it to be crumbling like a poorly supported house.

had i read this book first, i just might have given it 3 stars but i didn't and so i didn't.

fair enough. show less

I probably can't review this book any better than people already have before me. Nonetheless, there are some things I feel obliged to say.

Mostly, this book is stupid. The premise is completely stupid. It's basically about a society where 90% of the working class is "factionless", and the rest of society is divided into five factions based on what quality they value most – Abnegation for selflessness, Dauntless for courage, Candour for honesty, Erudite for intelligence, and Amity for show more kindness. If you think that more than one of these qualities is important, you are "Divergent", which is apparently extremely unusual and considered so much a threat to the status quo that people try to kill you.

Yep, just for having a personality that isn't completely centred on one quality.

On top of this, at the end of the book, the Erudite come up with the genius plan to destroy the factionless, who they see as a drain on society, even though they do almost all the work that makes society function. Wow.

So, you can read a lot of reviews about how stupid the premise of this book is, and I recommend you do, because they were so entertaining that they inspired me to stick with this book when I was 27% done and dismayed at how unexpectedly bad it was. But for now, I'd like to move on from the premise.

The characterisation was bad. It seemed like most of the characters were depicted in terms of the faction(s) they were associated with and had no personality or development beyond that. Some characters are one-note sadists, others one-note loudmouths, others one-note selfless people. Even when characters did demonstrate a new side to them, it never really felt like they were showing off a new side; it was more like some new, different character had usurped their body. That was the vibe I got.

The main character never really clicked with me. To be honest, I never really got how she was supposed to be ~*~sooooooo speshul~*~ just because she was neither purely brave, nor purely selfless, nor purely smart, but brave AND selfless AND smart. EXACTLY WHO IS ONLY ONE OF THOSE THINGS?!? And because of her specialness, she excelled at every mental test thrown at her, so much so that her passing her initiation was never in doubt… it just made no sense.

Her love interest didn't seem like a fully-formed person either, just your requisite badass with a tragic past. The romance itself was okay, just a bit boring because I didn't care about either character.

And as for the plot? Well, I can't say there wasn't one, but it's a bit thin. The good thing is that it's a quick read – reading this in a Kindle app on my phone, I'm not sure how this was 487 pages; maybe they were 487 really short pages? Anyway, that is what saves this book from a one-star reading. It's not a painful read, just mind-boggingly stupid. Which means you get all the entertainment value of complaining about how stupid it is, so really, it earns that extra star. I probably won't buy the next book, but if someone were to leave it lying conspicuously in front of me, I'd give it a read. This book is bad, but at least it's a semi-fun kind of bad. show less

Hooray - Veronica Roth grew up!

The plot thickens and the characters mature in this slam-bang finish to the trilogy.

Thank you, Veronica Roth, for the meditations on unsexy, uncommon perseverance. Through the difficult decisions Tobias and Tris make, we see that they are achieving a very adult understanding (though I know plenty of adults who still don't get it) about the nature of courage, love, friendship, and loyalty. The characters are realizing that though these ideals may start with a show more passionate spark, they only keep burning when people can make daily, selfless choices despite a lack of emotional motivation. Tobias and Tris have learned what fierce commitment looks like. (And their epiphanies were laid out in some really nice passages, though I no longer have the book with me to type them out here.)

SPOILER ALERT:
Okay, so I was pretty sure what was going to happen to Tris. I mean, why write the first two books entirely in her voice and then suddenly start splitting the narration in the last book? Only two reasons, both of which are good ones: to strengthen Tobias' character by giving us his inner thoughts, and to kill off Tris. It was a beautiful ending...but I do miss her. show less