Title: AllegiantAuthor: Veronica Roth
Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian
Pages: 526 pages, Paperback
Publication: October 22nd 2013, Harper Collins
Source: MY OWN :')
Rating: 5/5 CUPCAKES!
The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered—fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.
But Tris’s new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature—and of herself—while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.
Told from a riveting dual perspective, Allegiant, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the Divergent series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.
*SPOILERS. DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T YET READ ALLEGIANT*
I'm still trying to comprehend what I just read, still trying to untangle the mass of feelings I felt during Allegiant, still not quite being able to come to the terms that the series I love is over and that one of the characters I love most in the YA category is dead and gone.
Allegiant picks up from where Insurgent left off. Tris' faction-based society has been destroyed. There are wars waging against the Factionless. A group of people called Allegiant, who believe that they should send their strongest soldiers to see what's on the other side of the fence. To follow the instructions of Edith Prior, the lady on the video footage that revealed the whole other world outside the fence. Tris has hope that perhaps her and Tobias can finally settle, finally make a home for themselves, and possibly even one day, have a family of their own. Yet lies will be told, painful memories will arise and sacrifices will be made, sacrifices that will have devastating consequences.
I felt all the feels whilst reading Allegiant. I was on the verge of tears. I laughed. My jaw dropped in astonishment. This is going to be a rambling review, and I'm probably not going to make much sense during it, because I'm still quite shell-shocked.
Allegiant was amazing. It was unexpected. It was heart-breaking. It was emotional. It was beautifully written, it was perfect in my eyes, although the ending left me devastated.
Allegiant is told in dual perspectives...from Tris and Tobias, which was one of the clues that led me to believe that either one of them was expecting death. For the most part, I enjoyed the dual perspectives, yet I did struggle to differentiate between Tris and Tobias' voices. Seeing their two different perspectives sounds really exciting, yet I felt like we lost a bit of Tobias' personality. I felt like we were reading from Tris' point of view constantly. Tobias just didn't seem like Tobias in this book. Maybe it was because he finally revealed how vulnerable he is or it was different reading about him through his eyes and not just from the eye's of Tris, like we did in the other two books.
The Characters:
The characters were perfect. I have grown extremely close to Tris, Four, Uriah, Zeke, Christina, Cara and a lot of other characters throughout this trilogy. I feel like they are my best friends, and I have been with them as they have become innocent sixteen-year olds to ones that have become hardened by the catastrophic life they live. It broke my heart to see all the insecurities and self-doubt that these characters harboured inside of them...yet it was beautiful to see how they loved each other, and would go to such extreme lengths to lay their lives down for one another. To think that even after all that they've been through, they still go on making friends and living and loving and learning, and not sheltering away from the world.
We have Tris. Fiercely brave, loyal, determined and ready to destroy anyone who endangers her or those she loves. It's been interesting watching Tris' character develop throughout the trilogy. If I look back at Divergent I realise just how young and innocent she seemed and how she's had to toughen up because her life is just one huge game of cat and mouse. I could feel Tris' exhaustion in Allegiant, I could feel how badly she just wanted to live a life of safety...and then when she finds out that the Bureau supplied Jeanine with the serums, Tris realises that the new government she lives under is power-hungry and greedy for control...just like the corrupted government that she left behind.
Tobias was different in this book. We get to read from his perspective and I honestly didn't see much of a difference between him and Tris' voices. I had to check back to see whose POV I was reading Allegiant from, but I was able to distinguish their voices later on in the book. I saw a different side to Tobias in Allegiant, I could see this loathing for his past and how he wanted to rid himself of his roots. I could see the anger, the self-hatred and the fierce protectiveness he felt for Tris. I could see his fragility and it times it perplexed me because its Tobias...Four, and it was terrifying to see him lose control of his emotions.
I also grew to be closer to Evelyn in this novel. I wasn't too sure about her in Insurgent, she abandoned her son, faked her own death and left him in the abusive hands of his greatest enemy. Yet I saw how she just wanted to create a life for people where they could have their own freedom, and not be chained to the faction way of thinking. When she chose Tobias over power...I was so happy and touched by the moment, that I nearly spilled a tear.
Uriah's death saddened me. I loved his jokes and his warmth that was always spread through the book whenever he was in a scene and when he was in the coma, I kept hoping and praying that he would hold out, that he would make it. He didn't deserve to die and I hated seeing Tobias feel like he had been the cause of Uriah's death.
I love Christina. When she and Tris promised that they wouldn't leave each other anytime soon and then Tris died, I could feel Christina's pain emanating throughout Allegiant and see how she felt the unfairness because all the people she had loved had died. I admired her too, though, because as Tobias said, despite all the grief she has experienced, she still has hope and still welcomes new people into her life, even knowing that she could so easily be deserted once again.
And how messed up was it that Tori's brother was actually still ALIVE and she died before she could see him again. That made me scream in frustration because I know how badly Tori wanted her brother to be alive and how she wanted to get revenge on the people who did this to him. That was also a shocking twist, and I wish Tori had been alive to see her brother again.
I still haven't completely gotten over the fact that Caleb betrayed Tris and yet she still sacrificed her life for him.
David, as well. I can't stand him for what he did to Tris. He really didn't have to go kill her. It was just SO WRONG. *sobs*
It was also interesting reading the journal entries from when Tris' mom was a teenager and I really felt connected to her and saw how strong she was and just how much she loved her family.
The Plot:
What scares me most about the last books in dystopian series, is that they are so mind-shatteringly different from the world that we were first introduced to. I felt such a sense of nostalgia when we revisited Chicago and saw how destructed the whole world had become and how there were no such things as factions anymore, and I think I still haven't come to terms with the loss of the factions and the world that Veronica Roth originally created.
Now, once I had finished Insurgent, I was shocked with the ending. I couldn't believe that there was this whole world out there and I wanted to discover why Tris and them were locked in and I wanted to know what was beyond that fence. It wasn't what I expected, but I still enjoyed reading about it. I was expecting this toxic wasteland and all these wars and fighting, yet I was greeted with a government that believe Divergence was special because they were genetically pure and the others that were not Divergent were "genetically impure". It was quite upsetting that Tobias wasn't actually Divergent, but I agree with Tris that he's still the same person.
However, I did still find the whole genetic engineering interesting, and it makes sense and I can see why they want to just breed Divergents. They want to create a population with perfect genetics, ones that are selfless, clever, kind, compassionate and brave, to avoid the previous wars and destructions that humanity has waged against the planet and each other.
The Romance:
Although I love the relationship between Tris and Tobias, in Allegiant, towards the beginning, I felt that there were too many of these "saltwater and wind" kisses and it was a bit repetitive in the first few chapters yet towards the end, I started seeing the old Four and Tris, the ones that held unconditional love for each other and needed each other to survive.
I started panicking when Four went off with Nita in the middle of the night, and I feared that a relationship would develop between the two of them due to the continuously rising tension between Four and Tris, yet I had no need to doubt him, as you can really see the love they have for each other.
When Four goes through with the plan that is part of Nita's rebellion, I want to slap him as I know it's going to cause problems in the future. When Tris and Four were fighting and he retorted that she wasn't thinking clearly because she was jealous, I knew that he had to listen to Tris, as she's always right in the end.
It was just so beautiful seeing how much they loved each other, and how they brought out the best in each other and even though they had this tension between them due to the lies they each had told each other and I honestly feared that things were about to go awry, they remained true to themselves and their relationship.
I loved the dialogue between them, it could go from humourous and teasing to personal and serious that left me wiping my eyes and hugging Allegiant to my chest.
This is what I really want to talk about. The poignant, heart-wrenching ending that ripped my heart out and stomped on it.
Tris' death.
I had a feeling one of the main characters were going to die, and I had a feeling Tris was going to die, due to a tweet that I had seen on Twitter.
I was quite wary about reading Allegiant because I had a feeling either Tris or Tobias was going to die. A lot of people said that they found the ending stupid, but I didn't. Although it pained me when Tris died...I don't think it could've ended any other way, and I see the author's motives for writing Tris' death into Allegiant.
It was heart-breaking and although I didn't cry, I did sit on the floor and rock back and forth because I couldn't quite comprehend that Tris was gone. She was a survivor that survived everything, and to see her be snuffed out shook me...it was Tris. Lovely, amazing Tris.
The parts that really made me want to sob were the ones when the news was broken to Tobias. The way he broke down and the only way to survive The parts where he recalls the favourite things about her, the way she smiled and the way she was and it honestly broke my heart because I can't imagine Tris without Tobias, I can't imagine the one without the other. Seeing the loneliness and grief engulf Tobias was terrifying and I honestly thought that he was going to take the memory serum, to wipe away the pain of losing the one that he loved the most.
Like Tobias and Christina, it's going to take me awhile to accept the ending. Tris died a brave, honourable death and she sacrificed herself because of the love that she had for her brother, and that's how she believed it should be. She wasn't going to let her brother die out of guilt rather than love. I had a feeling that Tris was going to go in there, but I thought that she was going to survive, just like she always did.
What is also extremely sad, is that when Tris and Tobias were leaving and parting ways, they told each other that they loved each other and Tobias said that he'll see her soon...and then the next time he did it was her dead body.
It was awful reading about Tris' death and then having to switch to when Tobias, his parents and Johanna are creating this treaty, as he is thinking about the happy future that they can have yet little does he know that when he returns to the Bureau...Tris will no longer be of this world.
THE FEELS.
Overall:
Favourite Quotes: *taken from Goodreads*
“I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.”
“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.
But sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.
That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”
“I love you" I say."I love you, too" he says. "I'll see you soon.”
“But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.”
“The person you became with her is worth being.”
“Yeah, sometimes life really sucks," she says. "But you know what I'm holding on for?"I raise my eyebrows.She raises hers, too, mimicking me."The moments that don't suck," she says. "The trick is to notice them when they come around.