Book Thoughts: Pandemonium

Title: Pandemonium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Series: Delirium #2

Wow! I wasn't really sure what was going to happen in the follow-up to Delirium -- with the way the last one left off, I honestly had no clue what this one was going to contain.

What it contains: adventure, more exploration of the society Lena has grown up in, a whole host of new and wonderful characters, romance, action, and of course, an ending that left me desperate for Requiem. If you enjoyed Delirium, this is a sequel that does not disappoint.

What I want to talk about with this one, though, gets spoiler-tastic, so let me just say right now: ***SPOILER WARNING!!! DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU HAVEN'T READ PANDEMONIUM YET!***

...everyone who hasn't read it gone?

...seriously, I'm not trying to get rid of you, I just really don't want to spoil this for you!

...okay, ready?

...here we go. One more time: ***SPOILERS!!!***

Okay. So, at the end of Delirium, Alex dies. Lena is beyond heartbroken. But as Pandemonium proceeds through its plot, she works through the emotionally exhausting process of getting over him. She fears falling in love again, she fears her feelings for Julian, she fears betraying Alex, but she slowly learns to love again. And I loved that -- I thought it was beautiful. It was a bold move to kill off the love interest at the end of the first book, but I thought it made a powerful statement about the casualties of war and a broken society and paved the way to explore emotions that don't often get explored in these sorts of stories. I missed Alex, of course, but I fell in love with Julian right along with Lena, and I loved her healing process.

Plot twist: Alex isn't dead. Obviously I'm glad he's not dead in the sense that he's a great character and his death was sad, but in terms of the plot, I'm worried that bringing him back is going to turn Requiem into nothing more than a love triangle instead of the powerful dystopian piece it has the potential to be. I just wanted Lena to be able to be happy with Julian!

So, yeah, I almost hope she stays with Julian. But Alex... ugh I don't know! Can't wait for Requiem to find out.

Book Thoughts: Delirium

Title: Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Series: Delirium #1

This book. Oh my goodness. Once I started, I couldn't stop reading. I loved it. I really, really did.

In a lot of ways, Delirium is what you'd expect from a dystopian novel. I feel like if Matched and Birthmarked had a child, it would almost-not-quite be this. But I don't mean that in a bad way -- there are certain things that all dystopians have, just as trademarks of the genre, and for what it's worth, I thought Delirium did it very well. Despite the fact that it reminded me of both of those other novels, it is definitely a story all its own.

Lena is seventeen. In ninety-five days, when she turns eighteen, she will get the cure -- the cure for the amor deliria nervosa. Love, the disease that kills you when you have it and when you don't. But then she meets Alex, and everything changes. She's been infected, badly infected, but she's happy that way.

I loved the characters. Lena, Alex, Hana... I want to be their friend. I loved the little things that made them human. Yes, Lena is scared of rebelling. Her fear makes her real, and her courage makes her a heroine worth reading about. I love the development of the relationship between Lena and Alex. I love the friendship dynamic between Lena and Hana. I loved the history, too. The clips from The Book of Shhh at every chapter, the story of how society came to be the way it is, and the personal history, too -- the story of Lena's family. So much awesome packed into 440 pages.

The story kept me turning pages to see what would happen next. And by the end, I knew what was going to happen -- I had figured it out, but I had to keep turning pages because I had to know for sure if I was right. Obviously I'm not going to tell you what that ending was, because that would be terribly spoilery of me, but I will say that I was right. But the fact that I could figure out the end, that it wasn't entirely unpredictable, didn't lessen the story at all. In fact, I think maybe the [insert non-spoilery word here, because all the ones I can think of are spoilery] of the ending just made me love it even more.

I'm going to stop talking now, because I feel like I'm going to say something spoilery by accident if I don't. So I will leave you with three things: 1. Delirium made me go read some poetry. (I love when books give me good poetry to look up.) 2. I want Pandemonium nowww.... And 3. Go read this book right now. Please and thank you. :)