Thursday, October 24, 2013

{Audiobook} Review: Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Title: Allegiant
Author: Veronica Roth
Narrator:  Emma Galvin, Aaron Stanford
Series: Divergent, book #3
Length:  11 hrs 51 mins
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publication Date: October 22, 2013
Source: purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

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One choice will define you.

What if your whole world was a lie?
What if a single revelation—like a single choice—changed everything?
What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered—fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.

But Tris’s new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature—and of herself—while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

Told from a riveting dual perspective, Allegiant, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the Divergent series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.


At first, I thought my feelings toward this final installment were based solely on my disconnect with the audiobook, but I've discussed with others who've echoed my sentiments about this book feeling really slow. Like I was slogging through all of these details and all of this information, and I couldn't really even bring myself to care.  The thing is, it wasn't even a lack of action because STUFF happens, but as with Insurgent, I just never felt the same connection to the characters that I did in the first book, and I really missed that.

I will admit, a lot of my problem with this book did revolve around my lack of love for the narration.  Aaron Stanford as the voice of Four was great, and he should have been, considering the fans got to pick that voice to represent their beloved Tobias.  But I was in the middle of listening to Endless Knight which also features Emma Galvin as the narrator, and switching to this one with her as the voice of Tris left me disappointed. First, I kind of loathe her as the voice of Evie in Kresley Cole's YA series.  I didn't mind her as the voice of Tris when I listened to Divergent as a refresher to Insurgent last year, but this time around, I found it difficult to listen to her portray this character.  It's probably my fault for listening to her narrate a series that I'm not loving and then attempting to shrug that off and listen to her as Tris again, but I just didn't connect with her as Tris at all this time.  I actually found myself wishing Aaron Stanford could have narrated the entire book.

But, since this was a dual narrative, I understand why that wasn't possible.  Even so, this felt more like Four's book...like more emphasis was put on his story arc than ever before, which makes sense since he got his own point-of-view in this book, but I think his story ended up overshadowing Tris's.  Maybe that's why it was so easy for Veronica Roth to commit to the ending she wrote for these characters.  And, gawd, did she commit.  This was not the ending I was expecting, nor was it the ending I was hoping for, but it was real, and I can't fault the author for that.  This was a story about war and human nature and it's impossible to tell a story like that without the loss of lives, without the loss of favorite characters.

I know this book isn't being received as well as expected, and I know I'm rating it lower than I expected to, but it's not a bad book.  It forces the characters to look at some hard truths and face even harsher realities, but it's a dystopian novel, and I don't think readers could have realistically expected sunshine and rainbows for these characters at the end of the day.  I'm not usually a fan of epilogues because it feels like they're always used to soften the blow of the true ending of the story, and that's definitely the case with Allegiant, but I think it was warranted in this situation.  I, for one, really needed to see what became of the factions, the GDs and the GPs, if and how they worked things out.  I'm not sure I really ever understood which side we were supposed to be campaigning for, but I feel like they're all on the same path now...or at least headed in the same direction.

This final book was more than a little depressing, but it was a fitting end, I think, for our Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Erudite, and Dauntless friends.  I'm glad to be done with this world and all its political maneuvering, but I'm excited to see what Veronica Roth has in store for us next.




The Transfer (Divergent, #0.1)Divergent (Divergent, #1)Free Four: Tobias Tells the Story (Divergent, #1.5)Insurgent (Divergent, #2)Allegiant (Divergent, #3)


About the author:

Veronica Roth is from a Chicago suburb. She studied creative writing at Northwestern University, and wrote DIVERGENT (Katherine Tegen Books, May 2011) and INSURGENT (May 2012). The third and final book in The Divergent Trilogy, ALLEGIANT, will come out on October 22, 2013. In the meantime she will spend endless hours browsing Wikipedia in her pajamas as she eats corn flakes. (Or some other kind of bland breakfast cereal.)

Find Veronica:

Website | Twitter | TumblrGoodreads


10 comments:

  1. I thought about doing the audiobook for this because I knew between work and other stuff I committed to doing in the evenings, I knew the car might be my only Allegiant time until the weekend, but now I'm SO glad I got it on my e-reader instead. A bad narrator can make a book you're feeling disconnected from 1000 times worse.

    I'm feeling the same way you did, like nothing is happening, even though it's not for a lack of action. I guess I'm not as connected to the characters as I used to be, or maybe it's just the same book amnesia I get every time I pick up a series after a long wait and no refresher. *sigh* I'm dreading the ending, because I've already had a bit of it spoiled for me on Twitter, but I'm glad to hear you think it was real and did justice to the world and the tone of the story. I have a feeling I'll leave this series with mixed feelings, but I'll still be glad I went through it. Thanks for sharing this lovely, thoughtful review while managing to keep it spoiler free (an impossible task for so many people this week! :D).

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  2. I still haven't read it yet but I've seen the spoiler on GR :-( I haven't just felt the driving need to read this one RIGHT NOW so I'm ok with waiting a bit. I do think the response has been very interesting. I wonder what I'll make of it. I'm a tad nervous since you felt it was slow (and we seem to have similar tastes).

    My Friends Are Fiction

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  3. I haven't had the chance to read this yet, but I've been hearing things like this about it. It's sad that it's not exactly the conclusion that we've been waiting for. But I suppose it played out like Roth wanted it to. I'm apprehensive about reading it now though!

    Gabbie @ Rampant Readers

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  4. I'd say literally the first half of this book is really slow-paced (which is pretty strange, it being the conclusion and all). Things happen, sure, but they're not necessarily super important to the main storyline or truly advance it until readers get to a certain point. I do think it sort of is Four's book (and for very important reasons). I'm glad that you still thought it was a good book overall - right now I can't even figure out my thoughts on this. I'm hovering between hated it and loved it. haha Certainly was not what I was expecting!

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  5. That's a good point about Four overshadowing Tris.

    This book didn't really work for me and it didn't have anything to do with the ending. It felt slow and repetitive to me. Like you said - there is action - but it didn't move the story forward IMO. It was more of the same. Just outside.

    I didn't hate it but I didn't love it either.

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  6. I loved seeing your view on this very controversial book! Slow is one of the main words described when I hear people talk about it, but I'm sorry that you also got stuck with a narration that you couldn't really connect with. Sorry it was a disappointment, but you wrote a great review :)

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  7. I read the printed book and it was also very slow. Plus, on paper, it was hard to tell Tris' POV from Four's. I constantly had to page back and see who I was reading. I loved the first book so much, but the second book didn't really wow me, and this one just left me sort of indifferent.

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  8. Lots of people said that this book was slow for them, so you are definitely not the only one who felt this way. In fact, I think I'm in the minority, since I really enjoyed the book. I wasn't bored - the only thing that really bothered me was Tris and Tobias' relationship - I was SO glad when they finally got it together about three-quarters of the way through the book.

    I just posted my review of Allegiant today -
    Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

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  9. I know we've talked about this one a bit, and we definitely agree on most of it. I think a bad narration would throw me off farther! But at least the voices made Tris and Four sound different, because they read so similarly. Roth has talked about how she didn't plan out the series ahead of time, and because of that I think she left so many explanations for the very end, that slowed down the book tremendously. Have you watched her spoiler MTV chat about this book? She actually addresses some of those issues. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1716300/allegiant-veronica-roth-divergent-conclusion.jhtml. The ending still makes me sad and disappointed, but I think I would have been more happy with the conclusion if the rest of the book had been really strong. In any case, I'm ready to move on and away from dystopian!

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  10. I actually found the male VA difficult to listen to. I prefer the female VA as with the previous 2 installments. I felt this was a bad decision this late in the series. Had 2 VAs been introduced in thw beginning of the series I may feel different. In one chapter it's a female voice for both Tris and Tobias, and then the next chapter it's a male voice both both characters. It becomes hard to distinguish the characters because you have 2 different voices for each character. Maybe a dialog approach would have been a better idea.

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