Book Review: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver (Delirium #2)

“In a world without love, this is what people are too each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers, and data. We weigh, and the soul is ground to dust.” 

― Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

 

• Release Date: February 28th 2012
• Genre: Dystopian
• Publisher: Harper Teen
• Pages: 375

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.Lauren Oliver delivers an electrifying follow-up to her acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Delirium. This riveting, brilliant novel crackles with the fire of fierce defiance, forbidden romance, and the sparks of a revolution about to ignite.

Sequel reviews are always hard for me but, here we go. It was a bit of a shock going from listening to the audio book of Delirium to reading the print copy of Pandemonium. I was finally seeing names and places on the page instead of just hearing them. I had to remind myself our protagonist was Lay-na and no Lean-a and there are In-val-ids not In-val-eds

That said, Pandemonium is pretty much nothing like Delirium, in fact, it feels like a different series entirely.

Pandemonium is erratic with a  faster paced and more passionate story than Delirium. Whereas Delirium is a discovery story, Pandemonium is one about a journey. This book embodies the kids in the woods phenomenon seen in a lot of post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction. This idea where it’s mostly the teens and young adults that leave civilization to fight the status quo.

Lena evolves so much as a character between this book and previous one. I adore the reincarnation of her we see in this book. She is fierce and more determined as she learns the true face of resistance and loyalty.

Oliver employs a different narrative set up in the novel as well. While every chapter in Delirium was numbered and began with an epigraph, Pandemonium  uses a Then and Now technique where one chapter is the before and one if the after. I like this technique because it shows the duality in Lena’s personality and as the time tables converge you feel a build up. I think by changing how the book was laid out Oliver was drawing attention to how Lena’s personality has changed. Things are no longer neat for her, they are all about the Then and the Now.

This series is starting to remind me a lot The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld  in a way. I will say, I was able to predict most of what was going to happen, but it didn’t ruin the journey.

The only thing puzzling me is this book seems to imply (it’s never said) that Portland is on the East Coast. This confuses me,is there another Portland or something ? Does anyone get this sense ?

 I am so excited to see what Oliver has planned next in this series

Side note, I really do not like these covers. I mean, what is that plant on the left side of her face. The cover looks like an eye makeup ad or something.

*Thank you so much to Valerie from Stuck in Books, Jess was so happy to win this and let me borrow it !