Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver YP FIC OLIVER


In a future where love is a disease Lena risked everything to FEEL something.  Then she lost everything.  She’s learned the price of love and run away from everything she has ever known.  She’s buried her old self and all her feelings.  Now she has a mission, but Lena is about to learn that you can’t bury yourself or your feelings and they’ll surprise ypu when you least expect it.

This is sort of funny.  I have the exact opposite problem with Pandemonium as I did with Delirium. In my review of Delirium I mentioned that it took too long to get started, the middle dragged, and that is picked up steam and the ending was powerful and surprising.  This book is much better in every respect, except for the ending.  I can’t get into details without spoiling it, but it just felt like they wanted a big surprise to go into the third novel.  So if you loved Delirium you may not love Pandemonium, but if you were lukewarm on Delirium, then you may quite like Pandemonium. I know, confusing. The novel splits into ‘now’ and ‘then’ segments. ‘Then’ is right after the end of the first book and tells us how Lena coped and got to ‘now’, where she is on her secret mission to subvert the Evil Government that Hates Love.  The back and forth works well to build tension and it drew me in.  Oliver, as usual, writes excellent prose, with great descriptions and dialogue.  I just still two books in wonder if dystopia was the best idea.  There are 332,862 dystopias published every month (give or take), so the Delirium trilogy seems to have way too much competition.  Again, I think this is a very good, but not great book in what is turning out to be a well written, interesting, and flawed series. This is definitely one of the better dystopia series and if you aren’t so tired of them that you are actually wishing the world would end, then give this series a shot.  Regardless, definitely read Oliver’s first book Before I Fall (I reviewed it here).  It’s absolutely excellent and truly unique.

You can check our catalog for Pandemonium here.

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