My Rating: ★★★★
Method of Reading: Hardcover novel, 526 pages
Dates of Reading: May 14, 2014-May 15, 2014
Author: Veronica Roth
Publication Year: 2013
Recommended to: If you made it through Divergent and Insurgent, this is your wonderful reward. Definitely the highlight of the series but only worthwhile if you've already read the other two. I'm kind of feeling like girls who love Hope Was Here with a few years added on might find this character set appealing.
Quotes: "I feel the urge… to wrench myself from my body and speak directly into her mind" (9).
Movie: They're making this final book into two movies and that trend is like a runaway train: expensive, dangerous, and usually avoidable. I might be tempted to ignore both films because of that. It's going to be challenging to portray Tris--rarely does a character, in a book or movie, read people's intentions rather than their actions. I'm still unsure as to how Roth wrote her like this, goodness knows how Woodley & Co. will make this work.
Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_(novel)
Link: http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/p/books.html
My View: This book was a challenge, cover to cover. My first shock was seeing Tris's name under the Chapter One heading. Knowing what that formatting generally foreshadowed, I was pretty ticked off. I could only assume that Roth had gotten bored of writing from one perspective, that she was desperate to add excitement while churning out the last book as quickly as the first two, that she was running out of steam and, like the writers of a dying sitcom, needed to bring new characters to the forefront to "freshen up" the plot. It even made me feel like she was taking some of Tris's power away. Having sifted through this most obvious response to the narration change and several others, I had to approach the most painful explanation for why a change I didn't immediately like might have been made: what if this change was really the most reasonable way to finish the series? Choosing to let us inside another person's head, in this book more than many others, sends a lot of messages. Primarily, this makes quite a statement in a book where we see countless characters named and excessively few explored (Tris herself remarks on the difficulties associated with peeling back hundreds of layers of intention, reaction, motivation, and history). Remember that Tris and Tobias's romance began as what many early reviewers called a subplot: so giving Tobias the last word, making him such a huge part of Tris's story that he increasingly
narrates it and takes it over, is quite meaningful--it implies that the
point of this series is Tris and Tobias's love or, more correctly, Tris's capacity to love. After all, Tobias wouldn't need to narrate if Tris didn't go to the Weapons Lab for her brother. Since there is no possible character who could narrate with her as of
Divergent and no strong candidate in
Insurgent, this also implies that the importance of Tris's loves to her life, her choices, and her identity grows as she matures. And that, I truly can enjoy. At any rate, reading as Tobias was a challenge: his voice is pretty similar to Tris's and that made it tough to keep track of when I was reading as Tobias and when I was reading as Tris. And that moment about five chapters after Tris dies when Tobias understands that he's alone and we don't get any more names under the chapter headings for the first time…. my feelings were fairly extreme.
As I continue on this tangent about my feelings for Roth's wonderful characters, let me first remind you that my only love for the earlier books was for the characters. I am jealous for them, angry at them, frustrated by them, in love with some of them, and sometimes I feel myself shockingly mirrored in them. When Tris reacts to her mom's journal, her mannerisms are mine; when Nita calls Tobias "Four" I want to throttle her; and when the book turns into a Red Wedding-esque bloodbath, I shiver. Mostly, I cringe and anger to see characters I trust turn bad and my heart strains watching my favorite characters struggle.
Roth's ability to create winning characters gives her great weapons to incite strong emotion. Prime example: Chapter Fifty-Six where Tobias crafts the most beautiful good-bye, real or fake, I have ever read. I also love the simple moments in the book--like when Four admits that, somewhere in him, he still thinks of Christina as a loud-mouth from Candor. I even love that vague feeling of delight when I realize that Uriah and I could be friends, or that I'd eventually like Christina (after the brutal truth-telling had bled into her more pleasant mild sarcasm). She also describes her characters so well that I automatically cast them in my mind--even when the people who I want to cast look very little like what Roth describes (Does no one else see Rafi as a balding Godfather in a wife beater and Mary with red-dyed hair and fake nails? No…? Also I don't care what anyone says about Nita, she will forever be Sgt. Donovan from the BBC's
Sherlock in my mind.)
Other kudos for Roth: I love that there is somebody who really exemplifies each faction and ROCKS. It gives every virtue the power and dignity it deserves--it justifies this metaworld's organization system. I also love that Roth sticks in some random conversations, especially between Tobias and Tris, with content that couldn't happen in the real world but that seem so normal. While I love this aspect of that relationship, perhaps what I love most about Tris and Tobias is that they're
together, not "dating," because it doesn't matter in this place if you have a significant other, but a significant person clearly is still important.
Always,
Your Bibliomaniac
Bibliography:
"Allegiant." Confessions of a Book Addict. 2013. Web. 16 May 2014.
"Theo James." Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster Inc. Web. 16 May 2014.
