Harper Teen, 2013
It should really go without saying considering this is the third book in a trilogy, but there are some spoilers ahead for the first two books. You have been warned!
Now that some time has past, I finally feel ready to write this review. Veronica Roth brings her action-packed dystopian series to an end in Allegiant. Picking up shortly after where the second installment, Insurgent, left off, Tris and everyone in the city must all face difficult choices, the most pressing being if the time really has come to go beyond the fence. Secrets are around every corner, the things that have been accepted for truth so long may be more fiction than fact, and it will take all the bravery, selflessness, intelligence, helpfulness, and honesty Tris can muster to fight for the people and things she loves the most.
To me, this book did a lot of things right. The backstory about why these people have been living with the faction system and why the city is the way it is finally comes out. There is some truly incredible character growth in this book alone, and when you consider some of the people we've gotten to know over the course of the series, many of them have been on a remarkable journey. I thought that having dual narrators in Tris and Tobias/Four was an excellent move as it gave readers a wider look at the world these characters inhabit and showed that it's not just Tris making big choices, but everyone around here also has something on the line.
And for a series built on the questions of what does it mean to be brave and what does it mean to be selfless, the conclusion made the answer clear: more often than not, they mean the same thing.
Was it a big book, literally? Yes. Did I feel like some areas could have been trimmed, that as a reader I was being given more information than I really needed or cared to know? At times - some elements felt a tad clunky or unnecessary, yet I kept turning the page to find out what happened next. While the first book remains my favorite, I applaud Roth for staying true to the ending she always envisioned and the story she always set out to tell.
Comments welcome, and, as always, happy reading.
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