Showing posts with label insurgent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insurgent. Show all posts

Friday, 15 November 2013

Allegiant

The third book of the Divergent series, Allegiant, was released on October 22 this year. It being the final book in the Divergent series, people flocked to the stores to buy it and pre-ordered it online. In fact, my best friend pre-ordered it for me as a birthday present.
Divergent and Insurgent readers will know that Allegiant focuses mainly on the world outside the fence - outside Tris Prior's world. Tris, Tobias, and a couple of others join a rebel group known as the Allegiant, with which they attempt to go outside the fence to find out more about the world outside.
All of us fans were dying to know what lay outside the fence and what was in store for Tris. We all wanted to know what being Divergent really meant. True, all of that is revealed in Allegiant, however, the book has several loopholes and is not the exciting thriller we all imagined.

Okay, to explain this without spoilers is hard, but I will try my best here.

Sure, the book addresses all the main points about Divergence, but what about the rest of it? Tris and Tobias's relationship goes on and off, since they begin to have differences concerning Divergence. Caleb, Tris's backstabbing brother, is rescued. Caleb and Tris begin to get closer, though Tris has doubts about his motive for being nice to her, especially after delivering her to her execution in Insurgent. Christina and Tris do not hang out with one another as much as they used to, and *SPOILER ALERT* Uriah enters a coma, stays that way for most of the book and then dies.
Personally, I felt that the best part in the whole book was when Tris begins to find out more about her mother, Natalie Prior - who sacrificed herself for Tris in Divergent. Her mother was not the person Tris thought she was and through her mother's journal, she begins to feel closer to her mother, as if she is getting parts of her back through her words.
*HUGE SPOILER ALERT* Tris dies near the end of the book, sacrificing herself for her brother Caleb, who was to enter the Weapons Lab. Caleb had no chance of surviving, while Tris, being Divergent, had a slim chance, but she died. Tobias is left mourning her. Tris dying was the worst part of the book. Though the death itself was not very shocking, Tobias's reaction to it is heart-wrenching. True, Veronica Roth has shown her writing skills by making the readers cry. However, Tris's death was just too much to bear, and you will hear the Divergent fans say now, "I didn't ask for them to live happily ever after! I just asked for them to live!" No one ever imagined that the protagonist would be killed off, and this was what ruined the series.
Frankly speaking, Allegiant was a lukewarm ending to the Divergent series, and though Veronica Roth feels she did justice to her characters, many loyal fans feel the other way. There could have been a much better ending, and while reading the book, it came across as a not-very-well-thought-out plot. Like I said earlier, there were many loopholes, and there are many questions remaining unanswered at the end of the book.
I would say that, though the first book was the best in the trilogy, Allegiant is still a good dystopian novel. What makes it worth reading is that it is the final book in the Divergent trilogy, and that we finally come to know what Divergence really is. It's a book worth reading - even if it pains us. After all, a good series is one that makes you happy and excited, at the same time makes you terrified, cry and hurt. And the Divergent trilogy does that.

One video clipping...

Tris Prior's world is built on factions, divisions and being Divergent. And then, it all crumbles into a million little pieces. At the end of Insurgent, the sequel to Divergent, one small video clipping plunges everything into chaos.
The boundaries of the only home Tris has known falls away and so does the only fear she has known, being hunted for her Divergence.
Insurgent leaves off at a cliff-hanger, and a huge one at that. Looking forward to the third and final instalment of the series, I formed the idea for this review. But somehow, I didn't find myself publishing it until today. Allegiant, the last book of the series is out now, but before I review that, let's learn a little more about Divergence.
Until here, in the series, Divergence was a forbidden topic and it didn't just pop up into a conversation randomly. In fact, if you're Divergent and you talk about it, you're as good as already dead.
Jeanine Matthews, the Erudite head, made it her job to hunt down the Divergent and kill them, and the reason becomes somewhat clear at the end of Insurgent. The video clipping features Edith Prior, who calls to the Divergent. She tells everyone about the state of the world outside the fence, and requests the authorities to send out a Divergent army to purge the world of its illness. Jeanine Matthews sees this as a threat, and does not want to be usurped of her unofficial position as head of the city by the Divergent, who are made out to be all-powerful in the video.
Yet, it is unknown what actually Divergence is, whether it a trait, or the entire personality, whether it is a part of a person or their whole.
All these questions are answered in Allegiant, and I'm not going to start on it now or I probably won't stop before I post all the spoilers here.

Wednesday, 2 October 2013

Divergent - Veronica Roth

I've been wanting from quite some time to write something about the Divergent trilogy.
But then I know that most people haven't even heard about Divergent. It is a trilogy by Veronica Roth, an American author.
Beatrice 'Tris' Prior is the protagonist of the story, which talks about human faults like greed, selfishness, ignorance, cowardice and falsehood. Tris lives in the future of the world, somewhat like The Hunger Games. The society (or what is left over after a huge war that wiped out nations) is divided into factions - groups that have different ideologies. The factions are called Abnegation - the faction of the selfless, Candor - the faction of the truthful, Dauntless - the faction of the brave, Amity - the faction of the peaceful, and Erudite - the faction of the intelligent. Each of these factions has their own headquarters, and residence.
Tris belongs to Abnegation, but somehow, she's never felt like she belongs. When the choosing ceremony comes, Tris is torn between Abnegation, where her parents live, and Dauntless, where her heart lives. Her choice will affect her entire life. And what's more, Tris is one of the Divergent, the people who have been singled out and killed since forever, and no one knows why. Tris' adventure in Divergent and its sequel, Insurgent, follows the path she takes to discover what it means to be Divergent and what the great secret is that all the leaders of Abnegation are hiding.
I definitely recommend this book for people who liked the Hunger Games series, but were disppointed with the last book. So far, the series has held my attention totally, and I hope that the third and final installment, Allegiant, will be up to the expectancy of all its readers.