My feeling about Allegiant is that Roth envisioned a story about people raised to suppress all but one aspect of personality and what happens when someone moves from one faction to another. When she tried to come up with how that society was created, she started digging herself into a hole and then forgot the first rule of holes.
The problem with the dual narration is that the voices sound exactly the same. Absent phrases like "I watched Tris leave," I challenge anyone to tell the difference.
More spoilery:
The genetic purity folks are supposedly trying to increase the number of genetically pure people, as well as finding a social structure that the genetically damaged can live in without destroying themselves. It makes absolutely no sense to leave the Divergent in the experiment, where they may well get killed and never pass on their precious genes. Also, they're not going to get Divergents from the gene fairy. The only way they could show up in a population is if the original pure genes were recessive.
Also, after a devastating war, they manage to put a chain-link fence around a big chunk of Chicago and the people stay inside just because they're told it's dangerous out there? The Dauntless would be vaulting that fence every day and twice on Sunday.
Then there's the ham-handed storyline about the genetically damaged being second-class citizens.
In short, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union."
There are comparisons to Gone Baby Gone, but aside for there being a husband and wife perspective, the comparisons are not particularly apt.
I haven't read The Silent Wife, but do you mean Gone Girl?
Oh Jesse,
of course I mean Gone Girl.
Ginger,
I echo your frustrations. In addition to what you typed, I think there is a very interesting story about how
power corrupts and the role of nature vs nurture. I was pretty struck when it was revealed in the 2nd (?) book that Amity was drugging its citizens regularly to maintain order. While the threat of living outside the margins of society was imposed to keep all factions in line. The dominance, control, oppression themes had interesting possibilities that fell by the wayside in the 3rd book
.
le nubian, I totally agree with you on Amity in the second book. I think I actually re-read that part, because my brain went, "What, WHAT do they do???"
Random interruption to post this link to a group of prints re-imagining Game of Thrones as Japanese Woodblock prints.
Three sent to your profile addy. You just click on the attachments and save them and they'll play on anything that runs an MP3.
Meant to reply sooner, but I'm behind on my profile address. I got two emails (they ended up in my junk folder & it took me a while to parse the sender name). Does on of them have two recordings? Haven't had a chance to listen yet, but thanks a lot!
-t - I absolutely want prints of the prints. . .
They're really evocative of the source material! Very cool.
