VERONICA ROTH REVIEWS
DIVERGENT
by Veronica Roth
young adult // fantasy // dystopian
My biggest issue with this book: These are human beings we’re talking about here, and they’re expected to have ONE personality trait. …What?
In the world of Divergent, you can’t possibly be a smart person or an honest person or a kind person if you’re a brave person. And if you DO have all of these normal human qualities, you’re a special snowflake. riiiiiight….
I also want to know, how exactly is it possible that Divergence is so rare? This society is basically breeding everyone to become Divergent. Wouldn’t ALL transfers be considered Divergent?? Children grow up in one faction where they internalize all of the morals and values specific to that faction, and then they’re allowed to switch to a new faction— any old faction they feel like joining! Why the testing even exists is a mystery to me. I’m just so confused. It’s all so pointlessly complex. And what’s outside the fence? Why are they all so content to be caged in like animals? Nobody questions what is outside their city?? Where is the normal human curiosity?? I suppose it’s flown out the window with the normal human personality traits.
I really liked the writing style and pace of the story, but I couldn’t focus properly on the aspects I liked. This world was just not well-constructed enough for me to suspend disbelief. oh, and for the love of god, WHAT is with the train?! It. never. stops. Can’t run fast enough or jump high enough? Too bad. That freaking train stops for no man. What the hell is the point of this?! Train-jumping is not a demonstration of bravery. It is a demonstration of complete and utter stupidity.
I have big issues with, well, every character— but I will only mention Tris since I had to be in her head for 500 pages. What a bitch. I don’t believe main characters need to be sweet and lovable or even likable, but they need to make me root for them. I need to want them to succeed and feel for them.
Tris makes me feel nothing. Nothing but dislike, anyway.
I couldn’t have cared less if she was happy or sad or hurt. I really wanted her to shut up and let someone with a little compassion and personality take over the story. She’s just mean. I can’t stand her.
Also, and this is a spoiler, there was no reason, NO REASON, she needed to shoot one of her best friends in the head. She could have shot Will in the leg or somewhere else that would have laid him up until he was out from under that trance. That was ridiculous. A needless death to create needless drama. Ugh. end spoiler.
I guess in the end, Divergent did spark my interest enough to continue with Insurgent. It leaves off with too many unanswered questions. I just don’t know what to do with this book. I am so torn between hating it and liking it. The plot was thin, the characters were all jerks, but it’s getting three stars because why not. I was thoroughly entertained when I wasn’t yelling at or shaking the book in frustration. Also, bonus points awarded for no love triangle. Yes, you read that correctly. A story with no freaking triangles. Hallelujah.
INSURGENT
by Veronica Roth
young adult // fantasy // dystopian
Hm. I’m not sure what I was expecting from this, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t what I got. Among all the angsty relationship drama and all the hiding from traitors, I guess I was hoping for more information. I still don’t understand why the big reveal at the end was something worth fighting and dying for. I still don’t understand why being Divergent is so special and rare— as though it’s normal for people to fit into a neat little box with one personality trait…
And I STILL don’t understand that freaking train. Why don’t you ever stop? Has the conductor fallen asleep? Why is jumping from a moving train considered brave anyway? It’s stupid. It’s reckless. In no way is it brave. It still irks me that train jumping is a requirement for these “brave” people. Again, props for avoiding all traces of a love triangle, but was all of the Tobias drama really necessary? These kids are at odds with every single person around them. Can’t they band together and work toward a common goal? Jeez all they have done in their “relationship” is lie and hide things from one another. That probably got on my nerves more than anything else. and Tobias is always so quick to forgive her that their arguments end up lacking any real sense of conflict. By the end when Tris decides to betray him yet AGAIN and frets over how she will lose Tobias for sure this time, I actually laughed. It was glaringly apparent that he would overlook her betrayal AGAIN because she can’t do anything wrong in his eyes. Just BE TOGETHER, dammit, and stop with the nonsense.
The characters annoy me and the world does not make any sense to me, and yet I read this entire book in a day and a half because I couldn’t put it down.
I do think Roth is very talented. When she puts out a new, unrelated novel I’ll be all over it. However, I don’t see myself continuing on to the third book in this trilogy. This particular world just doesn’t do it for me.
ALLEGIANT
by Veronica Roth
young adult // fantasy // dystopian
I should have known. I DID know. I even wrote in my Insurgent review that I wasn’t going to continue with this book. Did I listen to myself? Of course not.
***Know that I will be spoiling both Allegiant and Mockingjay here. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.***
Allegiant is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever read— which is f*cking amazing seeing as how I had no expectations other than Roth’s action scenes. Well, there is no action to be found here. In place of anything gripping or suspenseful is a dreary, exposition-filled, complete injustice to both the characters and fans of this trilogy. I’m not even convinced Roth wrote this mess.
The godawful ending is practically the least of this book’s troubles.
I’m going to try and list the few things I liked about Allegiant before further tearing it apart, because there actually were some moments that teetered on being good. Number 1: Finally an explanation for why Divergence makes you such a special snowflake (even though the answers were so convoluted my head still hurts, and in the end divergence DIDN’T. EVEN. MATTER). Number 2: At least someone finally got a grip on what bravery really is, and it does not involve leaping from buildings or moving trains. And… those are about all of the kind words I can work up for this.
The narration was the most glaring annoyance. Tris and Tobias did not have distinct voices at all. I would often forget which one was supposed to be speaking. A dual POV can be so intriguing. Here, it was nothing but a means to the end of the story, and it actually hindered the character development of both.
I’m still tripping over the gaping plot holes. This book is swiss cheese— except swiss cheese is more solid. Take the Allegiant goup. They want to escape the city AND stay in the factions? WHAT? I’m sorry, but it makes no sense to want a new life AND your old, oppressed life at the same time. Also, it was that easy to drive past the city limit? Really? That’s it? Take down ONE gunman and just… drive out? Why didn’t everyone go exploring, then?
And the genetics crap. This world has the science and technology to alter people’s genes in order to remove undesired characteristics from their personalities. But they have no way to fix those same genes when they realized they screwed up??? I mean, of course the best plan is to stick all the “damaged” people into a secluded city where they can breed with other “damaged” people until someday, generations later, a few kids are miraculously “healed”.
The whole purpose of the airport was weak and unclear. Are they trying to save the Divergent? Are they trying to keep the experiments contained? Are they just using their stalker cams to turn Chicago into some sick reality show? They saved a few Divergent, helped Jeanine kill a few hundred more. I mean, WTF are you doing?
I hate comparing this to my beloved Hunger Games, but I did have issues with Mockingjay— one of them being how Gale was essentially blamed for Prim’s death. I’m not a big Gale fan, but that was not his fault any more than Uriah’s death was Tobias’ fault. Tobias didn’t even know he was partaking in something dangerous, so it makes even less sense that he was blamed so heavily. That drama was so forced, it hurt.
I also want to know why these people can forever alter specific portions of a brain simply by spraying a chemical into the air, but can’t revive a young, healthy boy from a coma.
Come on. Are we supposed to care about Uriah, anyway? Because he was not a character in this book. He was a plot device in this forced Tobias drama. As for the rest of the characters— what happened here? I have never liked these people, but the first two books gave me a very clear idea of who Tris and Tobias were. Tobias was a badass and Tris was a cold, selfish bitch. Who are these people we get in Allegiant? Two wishy-washy kids who could have shared one mind, acting so egregiously out of character I wasn’t sure what I was reading anymore. Tobias was like… a wounded puppy the entire time, and Tris kept having these random bursts of something that resembled kindness. But Tris was not a nice person, so it all felt forced, especially when it came to Caleb. It makes no sense that she would want to save her traitorous brother from execution in the first place. It makes even less sense that she would give her life and knowingly destroy the love of her life because she loves her brother. I’m not buying it. Not for a second. All I got out of that last interaction between them was what a selfish bitch Tris was right to the end. Caleb had a perfectly sound reason for wanting to give his life to this cause. He wanted redemption. He wanted to stop feeling the crushing guilt that plagued him. But Little Miss Perfect decided his reason wasn’t good enough, so she took it from him and left him with a lifetime of even more crushing guilt!! What the hell, Tris? What the freaking hell. I guess that wasn’t so egregiously out of character after all. She underwent zero character growth, and Tobias somehow slipped backward and became less of the character he was before.
And don’t get me started on how a WAR was completely swept away because of a little mother/son reunion. Evelyn never even cared about Tobias before, so her complete 180 was laughable. What about all of the violence and unrest among the factions/factionless? It just magically disappeared??
I will cry at a sappy Hallmark commercial, but this had me nowhere near tears. Not once. The more I read, the angrier I got. Tris and Tobias kept saying out-of-character mushy, lovey things about their future together— only so it could be more powerfully ripped away in the end.
And that ending. Tris went on and on about how she truly wanted to live, and then she actually fought off the mist of death… only to be shot dead? Are you kidding me?? That could have been a great turning-point for her, realizing all she had to live for and then actually getting a chance to make a better life for herself. Or she could have been shot and, I don’t know… paralyzed and had to figure out a new way to live. Or she could have lost her memory like everyone else and re-learn who she truly was with Tobias. Or she could have died in some powerful way that actually made sense with the story and got some kind of point across. Instead, it was just… lame.
Was this a brave, ballsy thing for the author to do to her main character? Some believe so, but I am not among them. One of the reasons I love Mockingjay so much is because Collins made the brave, ballsy decision to depict Katniss as a broken 17-year-old girl stricken with PTSD and crushing depression. While some will call that boring, I found it heartrendingly real and I so appreciated watching this girl pick herself up and learn how to live again. She got the job done, but she didn’t charge in like some half-assed superhero, and THAT, to me, is ballsy. Allegiant's ending was solely after the shock factor. It served no purpose. It held no meaning. God, Tris's murderer doesn't even have to live with the memory of killing her. Ridiculous. I despise when death is used for shock value. It's disgusting.
It makes me angry for the loyal fans of these books, because Allegiant was nothing but a slap in the face with an ultimately hopeless message. Marcus, Evelyn, Peter, David, Caleb— every single evil soul in this book suffers ZERO consequence while the hero is grief-stricken and destroyed. That’s life sometimes, sure, but is that really the only message Roth wanted her work to send? Good is punished and evil always wins? Wow, thanks for that.
We don’t even get a good glimpse at the new world that came out of all this. What exactly is Tobias doing for the government? What are they working toward? Is this really a better life than before?
I don’t expect fantasy books to make perfect sense. I don’t need books to fill me with hope by any means. But everything about this was just… unnecessarily BRUTAL.
tl;dr - This book tried to tackle way too much. It introduced too many new characters at the expense of the old. It attempted sloppy new plot lines without tying up the stories carried through Divergent and Insurgent. The result was an aimless, slow-moving, convoluted mess. What a sad way to end such a wildly popular trilogy. Yikes.
I feel like an early draft of this book was accidentally published instead of the final version.
