Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've found that my opinion of this book has gone down with time, so I'm editing this review.... Summary: "Allegiant" wasn't entirely bad, but it was by far the weakest of the "Divergent" series, including the short stories. There were parts that I liked, and at times, it had some of the same "I can't stop reading" feel that the other books had, but overall it felt very disconnected from the first two books. The characterizations and voices were different, and the plot had virtually no overlap with the earlier books. In many ways, the book felt like it had been written by a different author, enough so that at one point I went online to double-check that I had received the right book. On top of that, the book left me with a tremendous feeling of loss that left me unwilling to ever read it again. Originally, I thought I would get over that and reread at least some parts of it, but I never did. Instead, my uncertainty turned to dislike, and I eventually removed the book from my Kindle so I wouldn't have to see it when browsing my library. Even worse, the book also turned me off the first two books in the series for a while. I don't think I would have gotten over that if it weren't for fanfiction, but fortunately, that restored the rest of the series for me. Still, I would have to say that on balance, I wish I had never read "Allegiant." It just didn't give me enough to make up for what it took away. At this point, my honest recommendation is to read "Divergent" and "Insurgent" and then skip to fanfiction. There are several alternate third books out there that will give you closure on the series, including one I wrote called "Determinant" (if you're interested in trying it, search on "Windchimed Determinant"). There are also hundreds of alternate endings that assume the first part of "Allegiant" occurred but then pick up partway through that book and provide a happier ending. If you've already read "Allegiant" and want to forget it, those endings will help you do that. For those of you who are still undecided, here's a summary of what works and what doesn't in "Allegiant".... What works: 1. You learn more about Tris' mother. It's a little strange and contradicts the earlier books, but it's there. 2. You find out what happened to some characters who were mentioned earlier but not shown. 3. You get the story on the world around Chicago, why they're there, and how they came to be. Unfortunately, it's dull and contradicts the earlier books, but it does offer a type of closure. 4. There are some decent scenes. 5. It explores concepts you don't often see in YA books -- remorse, change, death, healing, and everyday forms of courage. In particular, though the end is crushingly sad, you realize that some of the characters improved each others' lives permanently and changed the world around them for the better, and that this effect doesn't go away when they die. Basically, their lives and relationships were worthwhile, even if much too short. What doesn't work: 1. The book lacks emotion. "Divergent" and "Insurgent" have a lot of feeling, both stated and implied. There are many scenes in those books that I re-read repeatedly, just savoring the feel of them. This book has very, very little of that, and what it does have isn't as good. The only feeling that's deep is grief, which is overwhelming at the end, but honestly, most of that grief is because you love the characters from how they were in the earlier books, not for what you saw in this book. 2. The narration never finds its groove and doesn't sound like it did in the earlier stories. Tris's sentence structure is suddenly short, with no "poetry" to the words, and Tobias/Four doesn't sound at all like he did in the short stories. Also, they sound so much like each other that I kept forgetting whose POV I was reading. 3. Most of the other characters disappear or die without any further development. They have very few lines, and some of them (including some important ones) literally die without ever speaking a new word. 4. The whole faction concept, with all of its interesting elements, basically just goes away. 5. There's startlingly little consistency with the earlier books. Personally, I thought there were subtle clues in the first two books about the characters and about what plot developments were coming, and I expected to see Roth pick up on those the way JK Rowling always did, but absolutely none of them came back that way. As an example, Tori got through Jeanine's defenses, implying she was Divergent, yet we saw her kill an Abnegation leader during the simulation, implying she wasn't. I thought we'd learn more about her, but there's nothing. I expected some big reveals about Caleb and Peter, but those didn't happen either. Uriah, one of the more interesting side characters, says almost nothing. The same goes with Evelyn, and the relationship between her and Natalie Prior, and Marcus, and really all of them -- those clues are all left as loose strings. 6. The plot is simplistic, inconsistent with the earlier books, and full of holes. The earlier books had a lot of action and unexpected twists and turns. This one doesn't. * Warning: The rest of this review contains major spoilers. * To me, the biggest disappointment with Tris wasn't her death. That was actually the most in-character part of the book. What frustrated me was how she got there. She found out that people were going to wipe memories, and she immediately planned to wipe their memories instead, without even trying to think of any other solutions. Why didn't she offer to go into the city and fix things another way to avoid the need for the reset, the way her mother did years earlier? Why didn't she at least try to use her influence on David to get him to see another perspective? For that matter, she could have kidnapped David and taken him into the city to keep the rest of the Bureau from attacking, or she could have used the memory wipe serum directly on him to get him to forget about the plan. Instead, she jumped straight to the idea of setting off the serum en masse. And then, after she decided that, she apparently could only think of one way to get it. She didn't try to figure out the passcode, even though Tobias is great with computers and even though David was obsessed with her mother and might have used her name as a passcode. She didn't consider attacking the group that was taking the serum to the plane to try to release the serum by shooting the container it was in. She didn't seem to make any effort at all. Instead, she just stated that it was a suicide mission and let her brother agree to die for it. It was so glaringly out of character that I assumed Roth was going to have a bunch of other things happen to change this course of action, but she didn't. Also, I can't help but feel like this entire book was an attack on Tobias. He had almost nothing good in his very dark life, and this book took away what little he had. He lost his Divergence, and he lost Tris, and for a while he lost Zeke's friendship. I suppose the point was to show that life is still worth living no matter what, but it really felt like heaping even more punishment on top of someone who didn't deserve it. There was no sense of justice to it at all, and that's a horrible feeling to walk away with at the end of a trilogy. I think that's the biggest reason this book "sat" so poorly for me. Injustice always does.