Book Review: Pandemonium

By: Lauren Oliver

Pages: 375

Published: February 28, 2012

I'm pushing aside 
the memory of my nightmare,
pushing aside thoughts of Alex,
pushing aside 
thoughts of Hana 
and my old school, 
push, 
push, 
push, 
like Raven taught me to do. 
The old life is dead. 
But the old Lena is dead too.
I buried her. 
I left her beyond a fence, 
behind a wall of smoke.

Rating: 5

Rating: Ok so this is my second time reading this book and I still love this book. I will try to remember some of the things i felt about this book when I read it the first time when it came out in February of 2012.

So this book is written slightly differently than Delirium. Instead of just having your normal chapters you have "Now" "Then" "Now" "Then". When I read this book the first time it took a couple of these back and forth's to get used to it.The "then" part was a bit slow but the "now" part makes up for it. The "then" picks up right where Delirium. You learn a lot about how Lena changes and what she went through in her early months in the wild. The "now" part is when she is in New York City with Raven and Tack. 

The characters are not the same characters as Delirium. You have Lena but you don't have anyone else from Portland. No Hana, no Rachel, no Gracie, no Aunt Carol, and no Alex. Instead you meet a bunch of new characters. Some of them are Raven, Tack and  Julian. With the introduction of Julian the infamous love triangle enters the book, except Alex is dead so it isn't really a love triangle in the same way. 

In the beginning of the book Lena was closed of. She didn't talk about Portland at all and she not to even think of Alex. Slowly as the book progresses she opens her heart up and learns to love and care for new people, like Julian. Julian was eighteen but he was innocent like Lena was in the first book. He was clueless about love but he was ok. I kept hoping and wishing throughout the entire book that Alex would just show up.

Then you have the cliffhanger. Well I can't tell you the horribly dramatic thing that happens at the end because that would spoil the whole book. You obviously have to read the first book first. So if you've read Delirium I would definitely suggest you read Pandemonium.

“Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.” 

“The flip side of freedom is this: When you're completely free, you're also completely on your own.” “If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.” 

“But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.” 

“That's the thing: We didn't really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.” 

“But...books are so much more. Some of them are webs; you can feel your way along their threads, but just barely, into strange and dark corners. Some of them are balloons bobbing up through the sky: totally self-contained, and unreachable, but beautiful to watch. And some of them―the best ones―are doors.”

Happy Requiem Day!!!
For any fans of the Delirium Series today is the day the final book comes out! I don't want to say goodbye to the characters but the end is here.

DFTBA
-Jane