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Spoiler Alert! Do not read ahead if you have not finished Allegiant!

Allegiant is the third and final installment of the Divergent series. If ever there had been a controversial ending to an entire series, this would be it. As an avid reader I have never encountered a book like this before, that after two astonishing novels it crumbles everything you thought you knew. While the book itself was a good, attention grabbing novel it’s not the way I foresaw the entire series to end. I’m pretty sure Veronica Roth decided that since everyone demanded that she NOT kill Tobias that she was going to take away someone as equally important to the story.

I personally don’t like leaving a series feeling disappointed and angry with the way it ended and with the author herself, but this was one of those novels. While I can agree that novel itself was a good read, I can’t agree with the way it ended. Let’s be honest, it was rather obvious the second you realize that the book shifted from Tris narrating to two people narrating, Tris and Tobias. Like many others I anticipated reading Allegiant because of the cliffhanger at the end of Insurgent and had extremely high hopes that something less scientific was outside of the fence. I was not expecting the whole genetic twist that was thrown in there, because I’m not all that interested in science as it is, and this just wasn’t something I was really interested in having there. I suppose Roth wanted a way to explain divergence and show that they weren’t really the freaks that everyone thought they were, but still it’s one of those things that should be left up to interpretation of the reader in my opinion.

In Allegiant our main characters venture outside of the limits of their city, knowing that there was once something out there because of the video that was leaked at the end of Insurgent. Essentially they find out that they were put into the fenced area that they once called their home because of the genetic problems that came from experiments that had gone wrong. They were to remain there until the genetically pure, the divergent, were the dominant race. Because Tris and Tobias were the only divergent who arrived they are tested to verify and study their divergence. Tris is revealed to be truly divergent and Tobias is shown to still be genetically damaged, which angers him.

Tobias is recruited by the attractive Nita, whom Tris takes an instant disliking to, to join a rebellion against the genetically pure. She tells Tobias not to tell Tris and, of course, he tells her. When Tris reveals that she is skeptical about Nita’s intentions Tobias accuses her of being jealous and agrees to help Nita. Shortly after this the genetically damaged attack the compound but are unable to achieve their goal of breaking into the weapons lab because they refuse to blow the door down and release the death serum and Tris saved David, the man in charge of the Bureau, so they wouldn’t be getting the password out of him.

Tris finds out the plans that the Bureau has to wipe the memory of everyone in the city so they can restart the experiment. She is outraged and comes to the conclusion that she is going to release the memory serum on the Bureau so that she can save the people in the city. To get to the memory serum they must enter the weapons lab, which means they have to break into the lab, thus releasing the death serum which, as the name states, will kill whoever triggers it just to get to the memory serum. Caleb, Tris’s brother, is ready to sacrifice himself for this task so that is finally forgiven for his crimes against his family and friends. However, Tris being the strong independent woman she is does not let this happen. She knows that she is immune to serums and knows in her heart that she will survive the death serum. True to her words she does survive the death serum, only to be shot by David once she enters the lab. She is able to release the memory serum before she sees her mother come and embrace her.

After the Tris’s death, all are affected. It takes Tobias two and half years before he is able to let go of her ashes. He overcomes his fear of heights and rides the zip line down, spreading her ashes over the city she died to protect.

Let’s address the obvious elephant on the page. She’s dead. She’s gone. She’s not coming back. I can openly admit that I had tears in my eyes as I read the last couple of chapters of the book. The chapter that describes Tobias when he first saw her after she jumped down to the net is when it really hit me that she was really gone. I hated it as the ending to the series. However I can agree with those who say that it would have been really good alone as a single novel.

The characters we met in the Bureau really didn’t sit well with me, especially Nita. I knew that from the moment she was introduced that she was going to be trouble. And she did, she became a huge problem that eventually led to the ending of the novel. David was okay; until you know…He shot and killed the main character of the freaking book!

It’s obvious I don’t really like Allegiant, however I do recommend that anyone who has started the series should finish it, no matter what they hear about the ending. I suppose in some way the ending was symbolic of how Tris really was the embodiment of her divergence, of her three factions: Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless because she was selfless and intelligent and fearless.