Book review: Allegiant
Jan. 26th, 2014 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seerofbreadAllegiant is the third and final book in the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. It's a relatively standard dystopian thing; my favorite (if rather dismissive) description of the general concept is "Muggles taking Hogwarts houses too seriously." It's gained a lot of popularity, and while it's not without eye-rolling aspects I think that it isn't undeserving of the attention. There'll be a movie out that I probably should look up more about; maybe it'll be fun to do a midnight premiere again.
The perspective thing was weird. There were a couple Tobias chapters where it would take me like three pages to figure out it wasn't Tris talking--I'm not sure how much of that is me and how much of that is the book.
I sort of spoiled myself for Tris's death (sort of) because I had to check some stuff on the wiki, and honestly I'm not sure why someone put "(Deceased)" next to Tris's age when most characters seem to have a separate field for "status" or something but you know what whatever. I was surprised by the method. Like, damn, literally fighting off literal death, congrats. Too bad it didn't work that long, I guess, but, congrats, definitely.
I'm having a bit of a crisis with my last NaNoWriMo project, though. It's more or less in the dystopian genre, it has two narrators and one of them dies. So I'm sort of like, "Is this story different enough to be worth telling?" I think so, but am also willing to fall back on "I just want to write it who cares if I get published" when it comes to it. The only thing I'm sure of is that I absolutely went through on giving the two narrators different fonts because fuck forgetting that shit. (I was totally gonna do it anyway, let's be real.)
As for other stuff, I remember when George first heard about Tori dying and goes to cry on Amar's shoulder and I'm like "I'm gonna ship that," and then it was canon, and that was nice. Though I don't remember if it was mentioned if George ever actually got inoculated against the memory serum? It might not have been mentioned because Tobias had other things to worry about when he got back than other people's romance angst, but I'm definitely curious. I might get into the fandom proper for those two. (Maybe also Marlene and Lynn. And though I don't think I ship it I really hope there's at least a bit of Christina/Tris out there.)
Which brings me to saying that I kind of really like the romance in this books? I mean I don't really like it but given the other dystopian romances I've seen Tris/Tobias doesn't seem like that bad of a ship. Like, yeah, it's far from a perfect relationship and it might be made a bit unhealthy by the circumstances, but they have a pretty mutual affection and they're a lot better at talking it out than any other ship I've seen in the genre.
Anyway, overall, I definitely liked it. I managed to finish it in two days, which says a bit, I think, given how bloody huge it is. I'm gonna go read some fanfiction now, or maybe write some stuff.
The perspective thing was weird. There were a couple Tobias chapters where it would take me like three pages to figure out it wasn't Tris talking--I'm not sure how much of that is me and how much of that is the book.
I sort of spoiled myself for Tris's death (sort of) because I had to check some stuff on the wiki, and honestly I'm not sure why someone put "(Deceased)" next to Tris's age when most characters seem to have a separate field for "status" or something but you know what whatever. I was surprised by the method. Like, damn, literally fighting off literal death, congrats. Too bad it didn't work that long, I guess, but, congrats, definitely.
I'm having a bit of a crisis with my last NaNoWriMo project, though. It's more or less in the dystopian genre, it has two narrators and one of them dies. So I'm sort of like, "Is this story different enough to be worth telling?" I think so, but am also willing to fall back on "I just want to write it who cares if I get published" when it comes to it. The only thing I'm sure of is that I absolutely went through on giving the two narrators different fonts because fuck forgetting that shit. (I was totally gonna do it anyway, let's be real.)
As for other stuff, I remember when George first heard about Tori dying and goes to cry on Amar's shoulder and I'm like "I'm gonna ship that," and then it was canon, and that was nice. Though I don't remember if it was mentioned if George ever actually got inoculated against the memory serum? It might not have been mentioned because Tobias had other things to worry about when he got back than other people's romance angst, but I'm definitely curious. I might get into the fandom proper for those two. (Maybe also Marlene and Lynn. And though I don't think I ship it I really hope there's at least a bit of Christina/Tris out there.)
Which brings me to saying that I kind of really like the romance in this books? I mean I don't really like it but given the other dystopian romances I've seen Tris/Tobias doesn't seem like that bad of a ship. Like, yeah, it's far from a perfect relationship and it might be made a bit unhealthy by the circumstances, but they have a pretty mutual affection and they're a lot better at talking it out than any other ship I've seen in the genre.
Anyway, overall, I definitely liked it. I managed to finish it in two days, which says a bit, I think, given how bloody huge it is. I'm gonna go read some fanfiction now, or maybe write some stuff.
