Ari Reviews: The Divergent Trilogy

Hello and good morning, dear readers!

So a week ago, I just finished the final book of the Divergent Trilogy (by Veronica Roth), entitled Allegiant. Aside from the fact that I’m a blubbering pool of tears, I really wanted to make a review for all three books, and not just Allegiant because that would be weird…so let’s get moving!

Read more is there! Spoilers for Divergent and Insurgent will be kept to a minimum, but I’ll be discussing the ending of Allegiant. So please, do skip that part if you don’t wish to see it. Don’t worry, the spoilers will be in small text so if you’re done with Allegiant, you can just copy-paste the text into the document and read how I feel about it.

So the Divergent Trilogy is a wonderful, action-packed and feels-shattering pack of books that makes you want to shrill like a teenage girl and throw the book at a wall. (By the way, I did not throw my book at the wall. But I did, however, shrill like the teenage girl that I actually am.) It takes place in a town/city wherein people are grouped into any of the five factions (more on that later) for the rest of their lives. Our protagonist here is Tris Prior, who has been raised in Abnegation (one of the factions) for all of her life. She, including a handful of others, have taken the Initiation Test (which pretty much tells them where they belong) and at the Choosing Ceremony, choose which faction they’ll live in and serve the for rest of their lives.

Tris pretty much believes she’s just an Ab-Girl until she takes the Test, and BOOM.

She’s then told that she is a Divergent, which is very.

Very.

Dangerous.

For reasons unknown at this point, which are eventually disclosed somewhere in the book and are further expanded on in Allegiant.

So before we get to explain what the hell a Divergent is, let’s briefly scan over the five factions:

·         Abnegation = selfless folk.

·         Amity = peaceful folk.

·         Candor = honest folk.

·         Dauntless = brave folk.

·         Erudite = intellectual folk.

(Fun Fact – before reading the series, I took an online test to see which one I would fit the most in. A friend of mine told me that I’d be best in either Abnegation or Candor. In the end, I got Divergent. However, when I took the official test that was in the handbook, I got Candor and was pretty close to getting to Erudite which is WEIRD because I AM NOT THAT SMART. Anyway, moving on.)

So at the ceremony, she picks Dauntless. This pretty much shocks her parents (more so her dad, wow. Her mom wasn’t mad, though, just surprised.) This leads to BOOM, ANOTHER INITIATION and then she was pretty much part of Dauntless.

The first book, Divergent, focuses on her life in Dauntless until a couple of chapters before the end. She meets new friends and falls for the enigmatic, striking Four (oh my Lord that man). Tris finds out more and more about her Divergence, and the book ends with some kind of war or battle that is to be faced.

So let’s go to Divergence. Being Divergent is like, not fitting in with the five factions. Like, you take the test and then for some reason you get equal points in Amity, Candor and Erudite. Your personality and being as a person can’t be classified into just one type – and that’s what the people in the series fear, which is the strength of the Divergent and what they can do.

So our darling Tris is Divergent, and she has to hide it…or at least, try to hide it.

Or else shit hits the fan, pretty much.

The first book was great – it wasn’t a drag and didn’t really overcomplicate things. It had god-given action oh my God, Tris and Four just made me want to melt and wring something because they were so freaking adorable I just can’t.

After reading Divergent, I was pleased. So I moved on to Insurgent.

To tell the truth, after reading Insurgent, I was a little disappointed. I don’t know why – for some reason, middle books in a series seem to be a drag. (Take New Moon, for example. And I don’t know why, but I found myself not really into the Chamber of Secrets or the Prisoner of Azkaban. And then again, there is It’s Not Summer Without You or the down spiraling House of Night Series…oops, sorry, lost track there.) I was upset at how Tris was in the book, and more so in Allegiant but we’ll get to that later.

Insurgent pretty much follows after the events of Divergent, where they have to round up the different factions to rebel against Erudite’s current leader, Jeanine Matthews. Tris and Four have some bumps here and there, shocking things are learned, secrets are spilled (ish) and the book ends with the mysterious Edith Prior, who Tris doesn’t know which is weird because they’re related.

Oh yes, and more feels are shattered. I thought you guys would want to know.

The plot was alright, just as great as Divergent’s, but it was Tris that irked me throughout the book. I get that character development is freaking essential, especially for the protagonist of a Trilogy or a Series, but she just…I didn’t feel the same Tris I felt in Divergent. Granted, she went through a lot (death, blood, and more death) and she had the right to act…differently because she was coping, but I don’t really know. Maybe it’s just me.

It might have been the sudden throwing of characters like, “HERE ARE SO AND SO NOW REMEMBER THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE PLOT VITAL” or how romance suddenly took the front seat and shoved dystopian at the back. One of the reasons why I was hooked on Divergent was because of how romance seemed…not wanting to shove itself down our throats. But in Insurgent, I could feel all the love all over the place. In a slightly bad, shudder-y way.

If I could give Divergent a 4.5, then Insurgent gets a 3.5 from me.

And then, Allegiant.

Jesus.

It took me a while to catch up (thanks to Goodreads, the Divergent wiki, and a few others for giving me what I had to remember!) and finally, I was able to flow into the story. When THAT part came, (outside the fence), I was stumped. It was like my whole perception on Divergent (the world itself) was a lie. I recalled that there was an outside the fence, but…wow. I never really thought it would come to that.

Again, Tris pushed my buttons here and there because of various reasons. I might be mad for saying this, but I think while Four was…upset, she was acting unreasonable. She was back to okay when she decided that she and Four were good together and that they made each other better, but while he was disappointed, scared maybe? I didn’t really like her ‘I’m-always-right-can-you-just-please’ attitude, and well. Girl, just because you’ve been right so far doesn’t mean that Four can fall on his knees, kiss your feet and just focus his opinion on ‘Tris is always right oh my goodness I can’t have an opposing opinion because that would be mean to my girlfriend’.

Oh yes, regarding Four – I felt for him so much. Wow. With the first revelation about him, it was like his entire being was a freaking LIE.

(You’re probably calling me biased right now because of my extreme go for Four and my disdain for Tris. False. I was rooting for Tris in other parts of the book, like where they deciding if they were to do the plan or not and then the ending…dear God have mercy on my poor soul.)

I liked the dual POV a lot – finally, we got a peek into his head. And at the ending, I understood why two POVs had to be done. It was painful, it was raw, heartbreaking…but wow.

Allegiant was better than Insurgent for me. The action had its place, there were crazy moral dilemmas everywhere, and then there was the plan that had to be done but nope suckers hell no.

Now, there are some people who cry ‘FOUL’ at the ending, thinking it was unnecessary.

I digress.

MASSIVE ALLEGIANT SPOILER COMING UP.
PLEASE STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T READ ALLEGIANT.

I found spoilerTrisspoilerdeathspoiler to be agonizingly timely. Not because I was sick of her character nor was it because I wanted her to die already, no. Tris is truly the kind of character who would sacrifice herself. Though the task was initially for Caleb, she decided that even though he had betrayed her earlier on, she loved him enough to take the burden of sacrificing himself away from him. It was really a proof of her character.

And what David said earlier on about sacrifice being required? Wow. There was the foreshadowing I was wondering about.

Also, there are people who think her death was ridiculous – the Divergent dying from a few bullets? Ridiculous! It’s like the Avatar dying from being run over by a Moped! It was actually pretty damn meaningful. Veronica Roth, through Tris’ manner of death, pretty much spelled it out for us readers: even though you’re the Divergent/Avatar/Jedi Master/Dark Lord Voldemort, you’re still pretty damn human and ultimately, no one can escape death.

Tris dying from bullets pretty much showed that through her Divergence, she was still mortal, human, and had her own limits. She couldn’t just take the bullets and rip it from her skin with a grin on her face, no. That, honestly, would be terrible.

Now, comparing Tris to Katniss of the Hunger Games, I personally find Tris’ death much more fitting for character. Katniss lived and married Peeta and had children – too cliché of an ending, she could have fought for her future and died for it, but no. It seems to me that Katniss was enclosed in a box of ‘you-have-to-fulfill-your-womanhood’ and ‘cliché-happy-ending-to-make-all-happy-while-risking-the-character’s-own-character’.

On the other hand, Tris didn’t marry Four and have beautiful badass babies. (Even though we all wanted that to happen.) She died proving her character, her morals, her beliefs – at a single price.

Killing off the protagonist is painful. I can’t even do that to my own OCs.

But the way Veronica Roth executed it was truly, truly beautiful.

4.5 stars for Allegiant and its heartbreaking, tear-inducing beauty, folks. 

Crying in silence was hard because I just wanted to sob everywhere.