Finishing the Divergent series

Insurgent, Book #2

Allegiant, Book #3

Young Adult novels by Veronica Roth

You won't like the last one, they said. The ending is terrible, they said. I have to read it anyway, I said. I have to finish the series. But I did what I do. I read the ending first.

Let me back up here. You can read my thoughts on the first book in the series here. These young adult novels are the next big thing after Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games. Yeah, That Big. The movie of the first book comes out next month. And I must agree, the first and second book live up to the hype. The writing is a little clunky, in my opinion, but written at an appropriate level for the young adult crowd, and the plot is break-neck fast.

Tris, the main character, lives in a city that we come to believe is Chicago, but with only enough population to fill a portion of the city, so it's probably the future. That population is divided into five factions who each venerate one character trait. On Choosing Day, 16 year olds can choose the faction they were raised in or a different one. Tris does just that, moving from Abegnation, a humble service-based faction, to Dauntless, a thrill-seeking faction that provides the city's security.  Tris goes through a great deal of self-discovery, finding out she is special even among the rare people who switch factions, at the same time that she is discovering some hidden truths about her city. 

That's the premise of the first book and the essential ingredients of the next one. With similarities to all the popular series I listed above (choosing day and factions are like Harry Potter, the romance a bit like Twilight, the female heroine in a dsytopian society like Hunger Games), it's engrossing. It also has a fairly strong female protagonist, a teenage romantic relationship in which they decide not to have sex before they're ready, and a realistic treatment of values and ethics in characters who are neither all good or all bad. I would and did recommend it for teenagers I know.

And then the third book hits. First, the setting changes. I can't say how or where without ruining a huge plot twist, but I think that change alone takes away a lot of the intrigue. Second, Roth adds another voice to the narration. Since I read the end first, I knew that was important to the outcome of the story, but it's still disconcerting after being accustomed to only one voice. Also, the writing gets even sloppier, like Roth was in a big old hurry for her publishers. Even the plot, which could continue to be intriguing, goes so far down a new tunnel of morals and science at war with each other that I was often confused. No wonder most of her teenage readers were disheartened. And finally, from the teacher/mom/Young Life leader standpoint, I was incredibly frustrated that the main characters ended up having sex. It's more implied than described, but still. I don't think it's necessary to the story and now I can't recommend that my students read this.

If, like me, the laundry list of faults doesn't discourage you from reading the third book, I'd love to hear your thoughts. One question I'm struggling with after reading it is how much a writer should aim to please her readers. Maybe this ending is where Roth was going all along, and she stuck to her guns and made it end the way she wanted. If so, I applaud her. But it feels to me more like she didn't know where to go and took the less obvious but more shock-inducing road. If so, she sold out anyway, so she should better have stuck to an end that would give everyone what they wanted.