Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me start off by saying that I enjoyed the first two books, but this one seems completely out of place. The plot-- omg, the plot... was most of that even relevant? And a lot of the storyline had so many holes that it just couldn't stand up on its own. She made Stephanie Meyer's idea of making a teenage werewolf fall in love with a talking baby sound more sensible than half this book. Don't bother unless you like confusing and disappointment because that's all you'll get. It's best to stop at book #2 and dream up your own ending. Let's look at how this book fails: structure, plot, and the ending. The first two books were good, but this last book became progressively lost as Roth grasps for a cohesive story. We can ignore the many grammatical errors and simply focus on the structure of this final book. It lacks the fluidity of the first two novels and shifts from one characters perspective to the other so frequently that it's difficult to remember who is narrating. Especially since she doesn't give Tobias his true voice. He and Tris sound like some person-- neither carries an individual tone as the narrator. And I LOVED Tobias-- he was a great character until he became some weird, wimpy teenager in this book and both characters became almost annoying. And the dual narration serves no point, except for the ending. You learn nothing new about anything by having both characters as narrators. They are in the same setting most of the time and have the same friends and both of them pretty much do the same thing - be sneaky, make plots, makeout and get into trouble. I found myself constantly flipping to the first page of each chapter to figure out who was talking. She doesn't even stay true to the characters she built in the other two novels-- making them do things which are out of their nature. It drove me INSANE. Did anyone ever think Tobias (the careful planner who was always skeptical) would just join up with some group for the hell of it to take down a government without knowing details or asking questions? No. How about Tris's willingness to sacrifice her brother? She's suddenly now okay with guns because they are lighter and feel different than the other guns the Fractions used? Hmph. And how about the ENTIRE group losing all common sense: A) Who was dumb enough to think she would let her brother die voluntarily? Apparently everyone else in the story so they let her escort him to his death mission alone. Yeah. That's smart. B) Everyone saying it's okay to send a kid with ZERO military experience to go on a solo mission to blow up stuff and possible get into a gun fight when everything depended on his success? Seriously? These people are supposed to be "military experts" and they pick him for this super critical mission. That's believable. C) Christina says she has to pee and jumps out the truck, then slashes BOTH back tires so they can do some sneaky side mission. OMG! Flat tires! Tobias tells the driver they are both flat and he's like "oh, that sucks, but that's totally plausible. Let's just split up on foot." Uh, anyone would wonder why both tires were flat-- I think he'd go look and notice the slashes. Dumb. Just dumb. This novel drags more than the others and loses its appeal as we learn more about the true secrets of the fractions and how ridiculous it is. The plot become slow and tedious to read. It seems like much of the plot wasn't completely thought out by the author--- why didn't the people living in the Fractions ever notice the planes flying above them? When they inserted Tris's mom into the experiment, they said they only reset a few people. They would need to have reset A LOT of people and being reset is supposed to change their personality-- wouldn't that be noticed by friends in the Fractions. Nothing made sense. And why didn't they try to come up with a better idea than a suicide mission? Seriously, they had other options. I could see other options and I'm just a reader. The only thing consistent is the failure after failure after failure in the plot line. And really, how many times can Tris and Tobias get shot? I actually began to roll my eyes at their many, many flesh wounds while everyone else keeps dying in various ways and many without reason. Although, I don't even understand why Uriah or Tori had to die. It was pointless and just caused more useless conflict between Tris and Tobias that annoyed the *bleep* out of me and continued to make both the main characters act outside of their normal behavior. Half way through this book I wanted to stop reading it. I wish I did. Oh, and then end is horrible. No, beyond horrible. Deplorable. The worst ending of any book and it's not because I don't like what happened-- sometimes endings should be sad. It's because of how she wrote it. You don't do what she did without making a major point and showing that there was no other way. But there were other ways. There were other options. Her ending was useless and pointless and a disrespect to the other two books and the characters. SPOILER So we expect that Tris is somehow super human and immune to the death serum which she is (shocker), but you don't expect the dude in the wheelchair with two bum legs to kill her. Yeah, the gimp kills the girl who always beats the crap out of everyone else. Why can't she figure out a way to get the gun from him and THEN go push some buttons? He's in a wheelchair. Come on! He didn't deserve to kill her. Was her death necessary to the story? No. Does it make the story better? No. Did it serve a purpose? No. So why'd she die? Maybe to make the story memorable? Well, then Roth succeeded in making this the book that I'll remember as being one of the worst book I've read. Good job. I applaud you. AND since Tris's death was to save the city she loves by reprograming the government-- would it work in the long term? Sure it might have stopped the attack within 48 hours, but what about in a week? A month? What about all the other compounds and leaders who they interact with? They will notice the newly reset government and their sudden lack of knowledge about divergents and the defective genes. Wouldn't you think that they'd notice something was off and then shut down the program anyways? Just reset that entire compound including all of Tris's friends or kill them as traitors? What about those horrible soldiers that terrorized the people in the ghetto? Did her death stop them? No. They had no affiliation with their compound so obviously there are more government programs close by. Don't you think they'll notice when one compound starts behaving differently than every other person in the region and in the world? So her death would have been in vain anyways if the book was to make any logical sense. To be honest, I didn't read the last 10 pages or so after Tris was confirmed dead. Maybe those last 10 pages were really, really good. I don't think so. What did her death do? Spare her traitor brother (giving him salvation and probably survivor's guilt) and devastate her friends and lover. Did it serve a purpose that could not have been accomplished by another means? No. Who does that?! Who kills a main character for no good reason?! Roth just pissed me off and made me regret reading the entire series. I wish I could erase this book from my brain.