Have you read "Delirium" by Lauren Oliver? Let's assume that's a rhetorical question. Of course you have! It was one of my top 5 favorite reads of 2011.
Well, dear dear friend Abbi won an ARC of the sequel, "Pandemonium," and the blessed girl decided to lend me this treasure. I received it on Thursday and finished it early this morning before work. I sort of numbed myself out right away so that I could make it through work without going out of my mind.
But I thawed out on my drive home tonight.
{SPOILER FREE}
I was on the highway and all of a sudden I found myself playing through the events of the sequel in my head. Then I was shaking a fist and screaming "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! WHAT IS THIS LIFE?!"
These are real things, guys. I really do this. I probably woke my roommate up this morning, in fact, with my frantic prayers and exclamations in the last 50 or so pages. I am not a quiet reader. I am vocal.
The thing is, what happened in the end was exactly EXACTLY what I always thought would happen. It was not a surprise in any way but I still felt sucker-punched. And that's not a spoiler because none of you know what I thought would happen, ok?!
I found the sequel to be predictable, but not in a bad way. Maybe that sounds confusing, but what I mean is that I don't think predictable has to be a bad thing if a book is very well written. And I think this series by Lauren Oliver is very well written. So although most of the major plot twists were things that I had expected long before Lena figured them out, I wasn't terribly bothered because I think the prose are wonderful. Yes, sometimes I was annoyed with Lena for not figuring out what was so obvious sooner, but I was never mad at Lauren Oliver for writing a book that was easy for me to "solve."
This next part I invite you to come back and read after you get your copy on February 28th. I will seriously need someone to work through all this with me.
Now for some
********SPOILERS*******
because I have nobody to discuss this exquisite torture with and it's killing me:
So I know one of the main issues this book will bring about is the question of Alex or Julian. YA always seems to force us to chose a boy and a ship to give our loyalty to. But for once the answer isn't clear to me. I am having more difficulty sorting out my feelings with these books than most others. And I think I know why. It's hard--for me at least--to choose a favorite between Alex and Julian because I think my feelings for them really have very little to do with them but more-so they have to do with Lena. Lena has a very different relationship with each of them and not just because every relationship in life is different but because LENA is very different. By the time she meets Julian she is a very different person than she was when she was with Alex. In a way, Lena is the Alex to Julian's Lena. So when I consider Alex or Julian, I'm really considering which Lena I prefer. Do I like the naive Lena who was just awakening to a whole new world of possibilities, smitten by her first love, drunk on Alex's words and ideas and presence and ready to sacrifice herself to the greater joy of love? Or do I prefer a Lena with fire and strength and fierceness who doesn't need to be saved, but can save instead, who advocates for what she thinks is right, uses her voice to pull others into her world? Lena has gone from fulfilling the passive role to the active. She is emerging throughout "Delirium" and redefining her world but she is still somewhat being directed: Alex teaches her and opens her eyes and she floats along in a happy cloud of deliria, which he has given her. Lena in "Pandemonium" is the one teaching, sharing, rebelling, advocating and giving the deliria to the next person. The active thing she does in both books is love, and powerfully. So for now I have reserved my judgement on Alex or Julian. It's all still too much for me.
I think beyond the fact that there are now two competing relationships for my brain to try to process and choose between, the end really hurts because of the anger. Alex is suddenly there and he seems so bitter--and I don't understand it because as far as we know he has just shown up in their group. So as far as I can imagine he's been fighting to survive for months with the idea that Lena is out there waiting for him...I don't see how he could've known before 24 hours or so ago when he arrived that she had sort of moved on. So why does he seem to be so hardened and bitter so fast? I would've thought his reaction would've been more shocked and hurt. I guess something about his cruel "don't believe her" struck me as wrong. What do you know about it yet, Alex? It hurts me that he is hurt and feels betrayed. It hurts me that I know this is going to KILL Lena because everything she has dreamed of for months is coming true and yet she's crossed a different bridge now, maybe at the cost of burning her bridge with Alex. I just hurt for them all. And I don't want sad, mean, bitter Alex.
I don't even know how "Requiem" will resolve this.
Oh, and from the second a woman grabbed Lena at Salvage I was all "Mother Haloway!" It baffled me that it took Lena so long to catch on...I didn't even need a cheat code!
The End.
