Book Review: Allegiant

Title: Allegiant
Author: Veronica Roth
Pages: 526

*Warning: This review contains spoilers regarding the series so please do not continue reading if you want to avoid them*

The third and final installment in the Divergent series did not meet expectations. I had been forewarned about this poor finale going into the series and ignored the warnings. It was disappointing to realize those naysayers had been correct because I felt Divergent had so much potential!

This book flip flops between Tobias' and Tris' point of view as they escape the city walls to discover the meaning behind a perplexing recording revealed at the end of Insurgent, the second novel. As a reader, I don't like when an author switches writing styles after two novels have already established readers to a certain style. Stephenie Meyer did this in Breaking Dawn by switching temporarily to Jacob's point of view and it failed for me in that novel. In Allegiant it was made worse because every other chapter switched between Tris and Tobias. It felt disruptive to the story to switch so often. I also had been very attached to Tris in the other prior novels, but because of the shifting viewpoints it was hard to connect with her in Allegiant.

The political context that was revealed outside of the city walls put a limitation on any good outcomes of the novel. The explanation of having this city experiment in the first place was poor. Overall it appeared that Roth had thought out the faction system well enough but not the reasons behind it. If the faction system were to disperse from the city then they would face horrible living conditions and discrimination. If those people were to stay in the city they would be forced to decide on keeping the faction system or disbanding it with major bloodshed by arguing parties.

I do not want to get into the specific details of the ending, but suffice to say it made me angry. Tris had basically no character development in the end - she was stubborn and selfish (thinking she was selfless) till the last page. How two very different groups decided to peacefully agree on a government system was beyond me. At the end I was left feeling that the author was saying "You can leave now, nothing more to read about here."