Synopsis: 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 and flame. (Goodreads.com)
This book jumps between the Now and the Then. Now is Lena, involved in the resistance efforts, trying to acquire intel about the DFA (Deliria-Free America) and Julian Fineman, the son of Thomas Fineman, DFA's leader. It's all very Alias of her. Then, just as a chapter set in the NOW starts to get interesting and you want to keep reading to find out what is going on, Oliver jumps to the THEN, where we find out what happened to Lena after she escaped into the Wilds. Her struggles for survival, building strength, meeting new people and trying to make ends meet in a world where she is now unwanted. Just as the THEN starts to get interesting, BOOM, Oliver throws readers back into the NOW. It became very annoying to me as a reader, this back and forth tug of war. I can only think she thought it was a way to build tension and interest in the inevitable climactic moments but to me, it was like getting a small taste of something and then having it cruelly withheld. It was not good story telling for me at all. I'd much prefer a NOW section and a THEN section rather than this indecision as to where to lead readers. Now, this is just my reading preference and I'm betting not every reader is going to have this same problem with the back and forth as I did.
My other major, major problem with this book is that I found it utterly predictable from start to finish. I could easily foresee the twists and turns that were coming for Lena. That certain characters were not as they appeared and that loyalties would definitely be tested. I am an end reader but for this book I did not have to read the end at all because I knew exactly what would happen and lo and behold, I was almost one hundred percent correct. Suspense just was not possible for me because I wanted to tell Lena "don't you see these connections?? I can tell you what is going to happen girl!" but of course, since I can't talk to fictional characters, I could not quite do that.
That being said, I did like the images Lauren Oliver painted in my mind, particularly of NYC. Times Square was utterly spooky and devoid of the life and sparkle it is now in present times in Pandemonium. It fit the mood of the book. This was a very different United States and Lauren Oliver made that very, very clear.
Finally, the third most disappointing aspect of this book is that a love triangle was set-up. And this grates on my nerves to no end. I loved seeing Lena in the THEN portions of the story because it really showed how she had to grow up and frankly man up in the Wilds. She had made her choice and now she had to live with it or basically die because those were her only two options. She had to contribute by making their homestead a liveable place and she did. She grew stronger, both physically and mentally, and really became a character I admired because she had to deal with a lot of harsh realities. Then, throw her into the NOW portions of the story and she becomes a lovesick fool (which I realize, given that deliria is a disease of love is a horrible comparison to make) but she truly does. It became more about the new guy than about her own safety and survival. I guess I seem a bit uncaring here and maybe I'm more hardened than Lena but I thought it had to have been possible to see her character melded from both these different situations, rather than falling back to someone I didn't recognize.
The ending was incredibly anticlimactic (again because I knew what was going to happen). The only way I can see to fix this is to stop reading so many books I guess? But sometimes, I'd like to see characters who are supposed to be dead stay truly dead (and yes, I'm looking at you Vampire Diaries TV show. Did Vicky really have to come back??).
I will finish off the trilogy when the final book comes out but my expectations are going to be nil. That seems to be the best way to approach a lot of these dystopian stories that are currently flourishing in YA world. However, when it's all said and done, if Delirium was popular in your library and is still circulating well, this is a natural purchase. And in some ways, I think this fits the bill nicely of sci-fi romance readers too. While I may be burned out on love triangles, not all readers are, and teens are notorious for choosing sides. This will have many fans, I'm just not leading the pack.
Pandemonium comes out in March 2012 from Harper Teen.
Other reviews:
Starry Sky Books reviews Pandemonium
ARC provided by Around the World Tours.
