A Reader's Heart

SPOILERS – LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS

‘Allegiant‘ was so incredibly bad, and the ending was the least of it.

A lot of the things I had problems with have already been mentioned in other reviews, but I have to put my own spin on things.

First, what the heck was going on with Four and Tris? Did they have a ‘Freaky Friday’ moment and switch personalities, because seriously, Four was a whiny little girl. There were several times where I just wanted to yell at him to change back to the character I knew in ‘Divergent’ and ‘Insurgent‘. If this was supposed to be character development, well, it didn’t work. And Tris went to being one of the most selfish, self-serving characters I’ve read in some time. I know I was supposed to believe she was selfless, but I didn’t. Sorry. But not really.

And the deaths?  I know its war time, but I seriously think the author was in a bad mood when she wrote those scenes because she killed almost everyone off, except the villains I noticed. Seriously, bad people do die in war too. They don’t get to take memory serums and live out their lives as if nothing ever happened. That part was just insanely bad.

Okay, so another thing was the duo voices. And this is part of the reason why I don’t think it was edited very much and if it was, it wasn’t done very well. Tris and Four’s voices were identical. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the character saying ‘Tris’ or ‘Tobias’ I would have had to check to see whose chapter it was. And, as together as they were in the first two books, they were apart in this one.

In ‘Allegiant‘,  Tris and Tobias’s relationship seemed almost forced. There wasn’t the same connection. I know they kissed a lot, but they never seemed to talk to each other the same. There were scenes where there were serious issues between them and instead of talking it out, they spoke for five seconds and then made out.

Then there was the info-dumping and the introduction of genetics. That introduced a whole new lot of problems for me. I was so disappointed that all the fantastic adventure and fun I had with the other two books came down to ‘damaged’ genetics. That’s what it all boiled down to? That some people didn’t have perfect genes and didn’t think or act in the same ways as those who did, therefore they had to be confined in some kind of massive mental hospital, which just happened to be the city of Chicago? Isolated, watched and experimented on in the hopes they become ‘better.’ Yeah.

I know a lot of people have mentioned the ending over and over again. And I have to agree with them. I didn’t mind Tris dying, but it was the senseless, unrealistic way it was done. I know that I was supposed to get into the reasoning behind her decision to die, but all I felt was that Tris had a self-serving Martyr complex about her.

The sad reality is I didn’t get emotionally invested in Tris’s death at all. It didn’t mean a single thing to me, because the way it was done was butchered. It was so unrealistic that I could have cried. She survived the death serum and then got shot? The same character who had survived several attacks on the compound? I would have believed in her death more, if she were killed in enemy crossfire.

As for the mission they had getting into the building. I didn’t buy that either. You’re dealing with a world that can decide what memories you keep or lose, but they didn’t have or couldn’t invent a device that cracks codes or a powerful portable vacuum unit that could suck in and contain all the death serum? And Tris was running about in a war-torn country and she wasn’t carrying a gun? When she had been just chapters before? Too many variables for this death to be even remotely realistic.

If you’re going to kill a main character off at least give it a realistic edge.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I can appreciate sad endings when they’re done well. ‘The Faults in Our Stars’ by John Green was done well. It was realistic and I could see it happening.  It quickly became one of my favorite books.   ‘Sever’ by Lauren DeStefano was also another book where my favorite character had a sad ending, but that was bittersweet because instead of his ending coming to him surrounded by four walls, he had a chance to live. It made his ending special.

All Tris’s death taught me is that a person can go through hell and back and that’s it’s just a waste of time, because the bad person is still going to win anyway. She should have just died with that first initial jump in ‘Divergent’ for all her death meant to me in this book.

Another thing that got to me about this book is that parents, ones that love and care about you, would not wish death upon you. The idea that a child would choose to die just because they think it would end up honoring the parent needs psychiatric help. Because that’s about as far from the truth as a person can get. Tris’s parents would have wanted her to live, especially when she had someone to live for.

So all I get out of this is that Tris didn’t love Four, because if she had she wouldn’t have done what she had. She had her own agenda – one that instead of being selfless was actually one of the most selfish things I’d ever read. She didn’t give a damn about the people she left behind as long as she got to be the martyr. Everything’s for the greater good after all. It wasn’t like there wasn’t someone else willing to do it, regardless of their reasons, was there? No?  Oh, wait, I believe there was someone else who would have done it.

Ha-ha I’m raging and I know it, but seriously there was no point to this character’s death apart from the author writing it that way. Senseless. Pointless. Meaningless. Weak.

Anyway, I couldn’t help, but write a little ditty. Inspired by ‘Billy, don’t be a Hero‘ by Paper Lace. It’s a chorus and the ending of that song – only I’ve called it ‘Tris, don’t be a Hero.’  Somehow I thought it was fitting.

Tris, don’t be a hero
Don’t be a fool with your life
Tris don’t be a hero
Come back and make Four the happiest guy (sorry that line a bit of a squash compared to the song)
And as Tris started to go
Four said, “Keep your pretty head low.”
Tris don’t be a hero
Come back to me…

I heard there was supposed to be a reason
That explained why Tris died that day
The author wrote it as if Tris was a hero
We should be proud she died that way
I heard some readers threw the series away…