Allegiant by Veronica Roth

source: gift

Allegiant by Veronica Roth
series: Divergent Trilogy (3)

I'd been looking forward to the conclusion of Veronica Roth's Divergent Trilogy and was planning to order Allegiant when Russell informed me that I already had a copy on order courtesy of one of his sisters, who shopped my Amazon wishlist for my birthday. Safe in the knowledge that I'd be getting the new novel on the day it was released I set about rereading the first two installments in the series, Divergent (see post) and Insurgent (see post). I'd read Divergent at least twice so I remembered its twists and turns fairly well. Reading Insurgent was a bit more of a rediscovery for me since I'd only read it once before.

It is difficult to write much about books like Allegiant (a later installment in a series, to which one is emotionally attached) without including spoilers for earlier books in the series. Suffice it to say that I think that Roth did a good job following up on the revelation at the end of Insurgent and answering readers' lingering questions about the world she created for her characters. Allegiant is wonderfully complex with lots more character development and revelations about individual characters' strengths and weaknesses. A powerful end to the series.

One thing that I found disorienting upon starting Allegiant was that the narrative jumped back and forth from Tris' and Four's points of view. I don't usually have trouble with multiple POV novels, but having just reread Divergent and Insurgent, which are told from Tris' perspective, I found the change jarring. That being said, I understand why Roth changed the narrative structure for this book and I don't think I would have found it problematic at all if I hadn't just gorged on the earlier books.