SPOILERS.
No, really, if you haven't read the book and want to avoid spoilers, stop reading this now.
To say that Veronica Roth's Divergent series has influenced my own writing cannot be stressed enough. I've had a rough, emotional year, and Tris's journey - Roth's grasp on suffering and loss, and what it means to be struggling to find yourself - resonated with me deeply, even at the age of 27. As I have started writing my second novel, I have read and re-read both Divergent and Insurgent more times than I can count.
Since I read Brave New World and 1984 by the time I was 14, I have always been a fan of dystopian fiction. I stumbled across the books on a list of things to read if you were sad about the end of the Hunger Games series - and of the books on the list, this story appealed to me the most. In some ways, the two stories are similar: female lead, US society divided into different groups in the future, and revolution. I loved the Hunger Games, but after reading the first two stories in the Divergent series, I loved them even more.
Until I read Allegiant.
As a writer, there are certain things that I look for when reading other stories, things that stand out to me. The inner battle within Tris of selfishness vs selflessness would be obvious to anyone reading it, not just someone dissecting a story to break it down into what makes it work, the way that I do. And I think that was Roth's overall goal - to have Tris grow from a selfish person into a selfless person. I understand the motive here, I understand why certain decisions were made, and I support the idea. Characters need to grow, they need to learn.
If you check out the reviews for Allegiant on Amazon right now, this is what it looks like:
Most people, I believe, are going to have trouble with the plot of the story. Specifically, one very important part: the death of Tris, who narrated the first two stories, and half of this third story. I try to avoid spoilers - so going into Allegiant, I had no idea that the POV would switch back and forth between Tris and Tobias. While I've enjoyed the short stories from Tobias's POV ("Free Four", etc), I knew as soon as I saw Chapter 2 from his perspective: Tris is going to die. Why else would Roth have made the choice to have two narrators when before she had only chosen one? So that someone else could carry on the story after her death.
I want to be clear about something: I'm very upset about this book. But I'm not upset about Tris's death. I've read a lot of those reviews on Amazon, both good and bad, because my friends don't plow through books the way I do and I've had no one to talk to about the story. There's a lot of "how could you?!" and "I wanted a happy ending!" in those one star reviews. Yeah, it sucks. Tris dies. She never gets her happy ending with Tobias. And for a lot of people - myself included, if I'm being honest - it is a huge disappointment. You are rooting for these two characters from the very beginning, it's impossible not to. There's no love triangle, just these two teenagers who fall in love in a world where bad things happen. They find comfort in each other, and you want that comfort to last. I don't know if she was going for realism or what - but this doesn't happen. There's no happily ever after here.
Instead, Tris sacrifices herself in order to save her brother's life. Her brother, who is a complete jerk, has volunteered for a dangerous mission and Tris decides that he has the wrong motives for doing so. She takes his place, and dies because of this decision. A lot of people are upset about that. As a writer - I can appreciate this decision. From the very beginning of the story Tris has been saying that she wasn't good enough, she wasn't selfless enough, for her Abnegation family. This is a full circle moment here. She honors her parents and her original faction, as well as her Dauntless faction, with her bravery and selflessness. I think this is what Veronica Roth wanted us to see, and feel, from this death.
But it was so poorly executed. She's in the room, she gets shot, she's marveling about how red and dark her blood is. She manages to save the day. Then you get a few chapters narrated by Tobias as he is out on another mission at the time. When he gets back, another character is all "By the way, Tris died. Sorry dude." (I'm paraphrasing.)
All of it felt very wrong to me - it's like in early theater productions, when death always occurred off stage, because it was easier that way. It felt like the easy way out. It felt like a stupid way out. Tris didn't learn anything from her repeated attempts to risk her life in Insurgent, when she was careless and stupid pretty much the entire time. Roth tries to show us that she has changed, with her final message to Tobias - "tell him I didn't want to leave him" - but she does it anyway. Was it supposed to be sad? I didn't cry over her death. I was too confused and annoyed with how the scene was written to be sad about it.
If I had written this story, would I have done it differently? I'm not sure. Because I think character growth is so critical to all writing. I'm torn between "this was an honorable Abnegation death that her parents would have been proud of," and "god damn it, Tris, you idiot." I lean towards the latter. Clearly, because it's 2 AM and I've had two sleeping pills and I am still wide awake thinking about this stupid book.
And Tris's death is far from my only complaint about the book. I read quickly, so sometimes I miss small details, and I find myself going back a few chapters to read them again to make sure that I understand everything. The explanation for what is outside of the fence around Chicago - some US government genetic experiment - is one of the weirdest things I've ever read. To me, it changed the story significantly. I'm not happy with that answer, and no matter how many times I read the chapters about "GD" and "GP," I just couldn't make sense of it. Not to mention, every time I saw the word "GD" I read it as "God Damn" which was probably more fitting than Roth intended. It was weird to me that as soon as she heard it, Tris abandoned the title of Divergent, which had been part of her identity for the first two stories. Suddenly now she's "GP" which stands for genetically pure or something - like I said, this part of the book was a little too out there for me.
I'm good with suspension of belief. I'll accept anything you tell me if it makes the story work better. But this explanation for why Chicago, among other cities, were divided into factions for genetic research was just way too out there. You lost me with that, Roth. Even when they figured out in previous books that they were being held in by the fence - instead of the fence keeping something else out - I expected something more. Something better.
About halfway through the story, I wanted to put it down and stop reading it. This story lacks the charm of its predecessors. It feels rushed, clumsy, and not well-planned. One of the things that always impressed me about the Harry Potter series was how things from the early books that seemed insignificant were actually important by the conclusion of the story. I want so desperately to find that sort of connection in everything I read now - and I plan meticulously to include it in my own work. But reading this conclusion felt so disconnected from the previous stories. I don't know if it was the inclusion of Tobias's chapters that caused this (and this was not well done. I would frequently get distracted mid-chapter, and have no idea who was narrating, so I would have to go back several pages to check, or else find out mid-chapter that it was Tobias speaking when the whole time I thought I was reading Tris's thoughts) or if perhaps pressure from publishers to get the story published quickly caused an under-developed plot to become the version that was printed. Instead of flowing directly from the previous books - it just felt like a mess.
I've read a lot of tweets about people who are "heartbroken' over the end of the story. I think they are referring to the death of Tris. Rightly so, perhaps. It would have been like killing off Ron or Hermione right after they got their relationship sorted out. And I'm heartbroken, too, but because this story is so bad. This is not how you conclude a trilogy. I'm heartbroken because the first book was so amazing, and the second book set you up for one hell of a conclusion, and what the audience received was so much worse than the first two books. I'm not a fan of the plot of the story, but I can forgive that, because I know that as a writer when you start a big project like this, you have a vision. And I applaud Roth for following through with that vision, if that was what she intended. I have a feeling that it was supposed to be a big shock but - as I mentioned - the inclusion of Tobias as a narrator was a huge tip off from the get go.
My main problem, however, is with the execution of the plot. It was a mess to read. I mentioned before that I considered putting down the story about halfway through - which was long before the death of Tris. And after finishing, I wish that I had listened to my gut and just stopped reading. I kept telling myself that it would be worth it, that the writing would get better, that there would be an ending worth waiting for. I was wrong on all counts. I looked forward to this book for months, read each of the previous stories several times, waiting and anticipating what was to come.
After finishing the story, I know that I will never read Allegiant again. I am tempted to - I want so desperately to find redeeming qualities in this story, to make it feel like it was worth my time. But I know I will never let myself read it again. And, sadly, I do not think I will ever read Divergent or Insurgent again either. Knowing how the story ends - knowing why everything was happening - the poorly planned reasoning behind the factions and the initiations and what Divergent people really are - has completely ruined the first two books for me. Why should I waste my time re-reading these books when what was revealed in the third book will always be in my head?
Because that is exactly how Allegiant made me feel. I wasted a day on that book. And I wasted many days reading and re-reading the books that came before it. That's not the feeling you should have when a story comes to a close. It should leave you wanting more. Everyone who loves Harry Potter wants more stories to take place in that world. And everyone I know who loves those stories has read them over and over. My own copies are so worn that the bindings are held together with duct tape.
Even Mockingjay - which had a fair number of critics because it was so different from the first two Hunger Games stories - leaves you with characters to root for once the final pages end. You miss them. You want to come visit them again.
But Allegiant does not offer this comfort. Instead, it kills the characters you love in the same way that a Greek tragedy ends with everyone dying. When you finish the story, there's nothing left. There's no one left to root for - even Tobias is unrecognizable as he becomes a politician "two and a half years later." I have absolutely no reason, no desire to pick up these stories again. That is what is most heart-breaking about Allegiant, to me - that it effectively ruined two of my favorite books and that I will likely never touch them again.
And I'm sad, because I allowed Roth's writing to influence my own so deeply, because this year has been full of loss and grief and struggle in my real life. She really is capable of capturing those emotions. I felt like I learned a lot from reading her stories. The most important lesson she left me with, however, is how not to end your story. True classics are books that can be enjoyed again and again - with layers so deep that you discover something new when you pick them up a second, or third, or tenth time.
Allegiant has made me determined that my own stories will have conclusions fitting for their characters. I will not kill characters simply to "shock" the audience, I will only do so if it is necessary for the development of the plot. Characters will undergo gradual, important development as they grow as people. And - like the trilogy I am working on now - I will make sure that the books flow together as if they are all the same story. Small pieces of information from the first book will be important later on. And I will do my very best to ensure that when my readers finish my stories, they're left with something worth returning to.
Veronica Roth, thank you for two amazing stories that gave me characters to love and inspired me to take risks with my writing and push myself out of my comfort zone. The story I am working on now is my best work and I do believe that a lot of that is because I spent so much time studying your earlier books. The lessons I learned from reading Allegiant will also stick with me as a writer and I must thank you for that as well. There are plenty of people on the internet who are vowing to never read your work again because they are so upset with Allegiant - I believe that you are talented, I believe that you understand human emotion on a very deep level, and I believe that you have the ability to write captivating stories. I also believe in second chances. So while I may be done with the Divergent series forever, I'm not done with you as a writer. I just hope that your next work doesn't disappoint.
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