Heather Finally Reads – Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Posted 28 January, 2014 by Heather in Blog, Heather, Heather Book Review / 12 Comments

Heather Finally Reads – Allegiant by Veronica RothAllegiant by Veronica Roth
Series: Divergent #3
Published by Harper Collins, Katherine Tegen Books on October 22, 2013
Genres: Dystopian, Sci-Fi, Young Adult
Pages: 545
Format: eBook
Source: Bought
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
3 Stars

What if your whole world was a lie?
What if a single revelation—like a single choice—changed everything?
What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth's #1 New York Times bestselling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.

dystopianlove

In this installment of Heather Finally Reads, I finally got around to reading the Divergent series since it’s complete and before the movie comes out in March. I’ve already reviewed Divergent and Insurgent on the previous two Tuesdays.

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***Mild Spoilers for Books One and Two in the Divergent Trilogy Below***

My Thoughts:

The Divergent series seemed to be a mountain on the entertainment scale for me. I really enjoyed the first book, Divergent, and the second book, Insurgent, was a bit less fun for me to read. The final book in the series, Allegiant, was a big disappointment and a bit tough to get through in comparison to the first book–and a lot of the books that I’ve read over the last couple of years. 

At the end of Insurgent, Tris and Four learned that the citizens of Chicago were a part of a social experiment, locked away inside the city walls and divided into the factions we were introduced to in Divergent, just waiting for the first people who are Divergent to be born. Once people who are Divergent like Tris are known, they are supposed to leave the city, according to the video that the Abnegnation had kept hidden for years. So Tris, Four, Christina, Uriah, and a few others make the dangerous journey outside of the city walls, and what they find there is certainly not what they expected. They find a sprawling complex occupying an old airport where the government monitors the citizens of the Chicago experiment.

It’s really hard to say too much more about Allegiant without spoiling too much of the book. You find out what it really means to be Divergent, and how it comes down to your genes. Like the Factionless inside Chicago, there are people who live on the fringes of the city who are barely surviving. You get glimpses of life inside of Chicago from the video monitors inside the government compound, but not too much more than that.

Tris has gotten over her extreme reckless phase where she seemed to keep trying to get herself killed at every turn in book two. In Allegiant she’s more sure of herself and her decisions, almost righteous about every move she makes. She can’t forgive her brother Caleb for his betrayal, but she certainly has no qualms about taking his place and making a huge sacrifice later in the book. I’d say that she never really changed much character development wise throughout this last book.

You get a much deeper look into Four’s psyche since you get chapters from his point of view. His inner thoughts and feelings are much weaker, full of doubts, and not as anger fueled as I thought they would be from the impressions that I’d gotten of him from Tris’ point of view in the first two books. In this book, he’s softened towards her, second guessing himself a lot, and he trusts a stranger blindly when he has a big moment of weakness. The Four that we know from previous books wouldn’t have done that. Four’s voice in his sections wasn’t very distinct, so it was hard to tell his chapters apart from Tris’ sections.

I give Allegiant a three out of five. The pace of this book was glacial, and it seemed like there was way too much information dumped in passages to make it exciting. As Tris was learning about the government’s project and her mother’s involvement in it, we had to learn all about it too, and that lead to too much info and very dry portions of text.  The character development was lacking, especially for the main characters, who were acting very out of character or simply didn’t change muchGetting a different perspective in Four’s point of view was nice, but his voice wasn’t different from Tris’ much at all. Overall, there was much potential for this third book but it fell very flat to me, with little excitement and a bit of a let down in the end.

Rating 3

 

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Heather

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I'm a PhD chemist who loves sarcasm, music, and books-paranormal, mystery, thriller, suspense, horror, and romance. Most of my free time is spent at the martial arts studio these days--whether practicing Combat Hapkido or reading books while watching my son's Taekwondo classes, or even working up a sweat with Kickboxing for fun. Goodreads

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12 Responses to “Heather Finally Reads – Allegiant by Veronica Roth”

  1. Uhg, yeah. Three stars because I liked the writing and wanted to see what happened but it was So. Slow. It just didn’t live up to its potential, sadly.
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    Heather 1/28/2014

    Totally, Mary. The writing was totally competent in Allegiant. The pace was snooze inducing. It took me a couple of weeks to read this. Sigh, I had semi-high hopes.
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  2. I still haven’t taken the plunge Heather..with so many books and fear of the being disappointed I keep pushing it around my nightstand pile. I skimmed your review and despite info dumps I am glad we get some answers
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    Heather 1/28/2014

    We definitely got some answers in Allegiant, Kimba, but this book seemed really rushed and had a lot of stuff shoved into it. It was sloppy and boring. Don’t hurry to read these. Divergent was exciting and good, Insurgent was less so, and Allegiant was the worst of the three. A downhill slide with such wasted potential…

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  3. I agree completely, but the ending was more than a bit of a let down. Really broke me up. I loved this series till the last book. Was such a disapointment.

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    Heather 1/28/2014

    Allegiant was so boring, that by the time I got towards the end, I didn’t even care what happened anymore. Pretty sad that it happened that way. Again, such wasted potential for storylines that didn’t go places that could have been phenomenal!
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  4. I really wanted to enjoy Allegiant, but it was easily the worst of the series for me. I really enjoyed Divergent/Insurgent, though neither were without their issues, but I can’t honestly say that about Allegiant.

    Like you pointed out, the pacing was glacial, and there was just too much info-dumping. Not to mention, Four was a mere shadow of the person he was in the first two books.
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