Hello everyone! I'm still off from school today, so I'm going to try to write a bunch of blog posts so I have some for when I'm busy. Last night I stayed up kind of late finishing
Allegiant by Veronica Roth, so I'm going to talk about that right now.
Just a warning, I will be talking about spoilery things in this discussion. For the most part, I won't be using names, but if you're ultra-sensitive to spoilers (like me), you should probably read the book before you read this.
My best friend is completely obsessed with
Divergent, and she got Allegiant the day it came out. She read it in a week, then asked me if I wanted to borrow it, with the warning that it was kind of a let-down after the first two. She also made a point of saying she hated the ending. I had also read some negative reviews online, and I think that gave me the advantage of lower expectations.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There were times I laughed out loud, times I was on the edge of my metaphorical seat, and times that I cried. A lot. There were a lot of big ideas and emotions in this book, some of which I will discuss further below. I also thought it was interesting to be able to see the story from Tobias's point of view as well. Since there was so much involving Evelyn and Marcus, I think it was important to know what their son was thinking. (And also towards the end it was obvious why we really needed two story lines.) The one thing I didn't like was that some parts were a little overly predictable (especially to my friend).
So if you've read
Divergent and
Insurgent, you know that they both have a lot of death in them. It makes sense, seeing as they take place during war/rebellions/chaos. That trend is continued in this book, with the death of a significant(ish) character fairly early on, culminating with the deaths of two main characters towards the end. Of course, it's never fun when characters you like die, but I think the deaths were dealt with very well, and that they obviously weren't just random Veronica Roth Was Feeling Sadistic deaths. They each had a meaning, and that is the kind of death that I can handle and even sometimes enjoy reading about. (Sometimes. Like I said, I cried a lot last night, and I'm not really over it yet.)
There were a few other things that stood out to me while I was reading. First, the relationship between Tris and Tobias. I remember telling my friend (when I was at about page 50) that I was happy that they were obviously still in love, even if they had had some issues with honesty and trust in the past. As the story progressed, I think that remained the case, all the way to the end. Sure, they fought sometimes, sure, there was a major problem (again), but I really liked what Tris said about Tobias making her sharper. It wasn't a "boy saves girl" relationship, it was a "boy and girl make each other better" relationship, and I think that's the only kind of relationship worth having.
Another thing that I really got into was the relationship between Tris and Caleb. I have an older brother, and while he didn't betray my entire community or lead me to my execution, I was still able to relate to a lot of the emotions that Tris was feeling towards him. (I'm going to be honest here, most of my tears were during the last conversation between Tris and Caleb.) Tris was right, that wasn't why Caleb was doing it, and it just gave me a lot to think about.
Finally, I want to talk about some of the morals in the book. I thought the whole GD vs GP argument was very interesting, especially since, in one sense, I would be our society's equivalent of GP. I'm white, and that gives me a very basic advantage over people who aren't. I have always found this annoying and wrong, but it's still true. Hopefully other people that read
Allegiant will be able to draw similar parallels and will see that in some ways, the prejudices in our society are just as ridiculous as the prejudices in theirs.
Whew! That's all I'm going to say about
Allegiant, but I could probably write pages about it. I think I would give this book a 5 out of 5 for writing quality, and a 4 out of 5 for plot. It was an awesome book, and I would definitely recommend it! (Unless you haven't read the first two. You should read those first.)
Congratulations for making it the end of this extremely long post! Now I have a few questions for you, so leave your answers down in comments. Have you read Allegiant yet? If so, what did you think? Also, do you cry often when you read? If so, does that make you think the book is better or worse?
