'Allegiant' ending inspires some angry fan reaction
Industry watchers were already guessing that sales of “Allegiant,” the third and final installment of Veronica Roth’s dystopian trilogy, would be big.
And it turns out that “Allegiant” gave its publisher, HarperCollins, its biggest first-day sales numbers ever, selling 455,000 copies in all formats all over the world, according to Publishers Weekly.
The novel had impressive pre-sales numbers and anticipation was running high before the book’s release, with some stores planning midnight celebrations.
But now that the book’s been out for a few days, some of its readers are expressing intense displeasure with the way that the story wraps up. You’ll get no spoilers from us, but apparently the ending is rather controversial.
Some fans took to Twitter to express their happiness or displeasure with the book. There were those, like Laura Burris, who seemed quite satisfied with the finale.
“#Allegiant. Completed. Heartbroken. Numb. Amazed. @VeronicaRoth is a goddess,” she wrote.
But for others it was a different story. Twitter user Jirah Catungal tweeting, “I want to cry [because] of Allegiant but I feel numb,” while Izzy Lightwood tweeted that "THE PAIN OF ALLEGIANT FEELS LIKE AN OPEN WOUND SPRINKLED WITH SALT OIL AND ALCOHOL."
In fact, so many angry readers vented their feelings into cyberspace that the site Flavorwire wrote an article titled “Reader Reactions to ‘Allegiant’ Are an Online Fandom Horror Story” (spoilers are included) which examines the book’s negative Amazon reviews.
Apparently some fans decided not to read the book based on what they heard. Hypable writer Marama Whyte pleaded with them to think again in a piece titled “Don’t be put off by ‘Allegiant’ spoilers: Why you should still read the book.”
“It isn’t fair to reduce the entire story of Allegiant to one single event, whatever that event may be,” Whyte wrote. “That is the problem with Allegiant spoilers. They are given as a snippet of information, without context or explanation…. Other people seem to be forgetting that, as an author, Roth doesn’t owe it to them to wrap up her story the way that they would wish. After all, this is her story, and her series. Really, we’re just lucky that she decided to share it with us in the first place.”
Roth answered the fan response via Twitter.
“Here is all I'm going to say: strong reader reactions, whether negative or positive, are completely fine with me,” she tweeted, following that with “Physical threats are NOT fine with me, but we all know that already” and “I will talk about Allegiant more when the tour is done. For now, read, react, talk.”
According to the website BiblioFiend, as referenced in Roth’s tweet, some angry fans have threatening the author with violence.
“It is incredibly unfortunate that people would resort to such claims against someone who has shared such a beautiful thing with the world,” the website wrote.
