Allegiant

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

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 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 show more 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

This series went downhill the longer it went. Honestly, the only reason I kept reading this one was because I wanted to see if the story redeems itself by the end. It ended up doing the opposite. The end of this book created such a huge editing flaw (in my opinion) that I wanted to tear my hair out. Unfortunately, I can't go into detail about that since that would become a major spoiler.

However, I can talk about the inconsistency of the characters. Or is it consistency if they are constantly inconsistent? I should get a philosopher on that one. Anyway, throughout the whole book I kept having to stop to ponder what in the world would possess these characters to do such a thing when it doesn't fit with their personality or anything that show more they have done in the past that would indicate that this action would be their logical response. Maybe not with Tris as much, but Four completely lost all appeal that he had in the first two. Suddenly he has severe confidence issues that have practically no basis, can't make a decision by himself to save his life, and is suddenly jealous of like ever man that utters a word to Tris. What the hell? Where did this jealousy come into play? Then later, Tris also starts in on the whole, "I don't like when girls say 'Hi' to you" bit that made me want to strangle her!

Secondly, this book is written in a dual first-person perspective that doesn't add to the story in any way and just makes reading a new chapter confusing. By the middle of the book, it is impossible to tell Tris and Tobias apart since the writing and tone are exactly the same. The only thing that indicates who is talking in the name in the chapter title. There were a couple times where I read halfway into a chapter thinking it was Tris when it was actually Tobias. Even with the chapter headings! They were that similar. This first-person present tense perspective also adds to my major editing flaw at the end of the book. Not only does the ending not makes sense in general, it becomes worse because of the tense used. Did nobody see that this was an issue?

Thirdly, I couldn't help but laugh at the very basis of why all of this stuff was going on in the first place. The actions of basically everyone involved made no sense, and I don't actually know if anybody in this book knows how science works. Not even the scientists. It was laughable that their "plan" began to work within like two generations. Seriously? If they screwed up the genetics of these people as badly as they claim they did, it's going to take much more than a few "genetically pure" people reproducing with "genetically damaged" people over a couple of generations in order to fix the problem. Did nobody read up on how genetics work?

The more I talk about this book, the more it frustrates me. It was clumsily written. The characters just annoyed me. And the main concept was so ludicrous that it was completely unbelievable. If you start this series, I wouldn't really bother reading the last book. Just find a synopsis somewhere if you really want to know what happens and spare yourself the headache of trying to make sense of a book with so many plot holes it might as well just make good use of itself and just become a slice of swiss cheese. At least then we could have a snack while we read something more worth our time. show less

How to rate this book...that is quite the conundrum. On the one hand, this is the only book in the series that really says anything interesting---about choice, about love, about human nature and the lies we tell ourselves about it. But on the other hand, there's that ending. That drastic, hard-to-swallow ending.

I'm not saying that endings like that don't have their place. But I always feel that when you go to that extreme as an author, you'd better have a damned good reason. And, really, that reason should be that it makes your book better...which I'm not altogether convinced it did, here.

Did it teach me something new about sacrifice and loss and bravery and pain? No. Did it make the characters better, more interesting? No. Did it do show more anything at all?

Well...it did seem to act as a panacea of sorts. All the complex issues surrounding human nature and government and violence and change? All those lost souls on the fringe of society, resentful and frightened and suspicious? All the greedy GPs with their prejudices nationwide? All of that...swept aside with one lost soul. And in its wake? A bright, blissful World of Tomorrow!

Right.

So, no...I can't say that such an ending made the book, or the series, better. And what is perhaps more telling, I've finished this series without feeling any eagerness to recommend it or discuss it. So what to rate this? I'm tempted to go for one star because of that awful ending, but the fact that it did attempt to ask interesting and challenging questions makes me think it deserves at least two. show less

A good book can take you away for a little while, a great book can move you. This book moved me. I am alternating between grief, numbness, and wanting to do something brave. This book makes me want to be brave. Even though tears were streaming down my face I knew that this was the perfect ending to this series. I know that some (and the more that I look at other reviews, a lot) may hate this ending but to me it represents every thing this series is trying to say. Books like this just strengthen my love of books. So well done Veronica Roth, you've created characters that I will always love and never forget and you've made me want to be brave again. (Ever since I finished this book I have had "Brave" by Sara Bareilles stuck in my head. It show more feels like my own little theme song right now.) This was well worth skipping studying for my mid-term that is today. This book was heart-breaking, beautiful, and inspiring. Who among us will be brave when it counts the most? I will. I will stand up and be brave. show less

This book really surprised me in both good and heartbreaking ways. One of the things I liked most was the use of dual perspectives. Switching between Tris and Tobias gave the story more depth and made me feel more connected to both characters. It was great to finally see inside Tobias’s head and learn more about his past and what shaped him. His family background hit hard, and I really felt for him throughout the book.

There were a few moments that caught me off guard, like Tris cutting her hair and suddenly seeing real-world brands like Coca-Cola pop up in the story. That twist, bringing in the real world, felt a bit odd to me. I’m not sure I liked that part. It pulled me out of the dystopian world I was used to.

Still, the story had show more strong emotional moments. Caleb’s fate had me nervous, and I was relieved when it looked like he wouldn’t be executed. And again, the dual perspectives helped keep the book engaging from beginning to end.

But then… they killed Tris. The actual protagonist. I was shocked, and honestly, I still haven’t recovered. It was such a bold move, and even though it made sense in the story, it left me devastated.

Final Thoughts:
I really liked the structure and getting to see both Tris’s and Tobias’s points of view. But the ending completely broke me. Tris’s death was unexpected and painful but also powerful. A strong conclusion to the series. show less