Pandemonium

Title: Pandemonium

Author: Lauren Oliver

Year: 2012

Genre: Science Fiction

Age: Middle
school up

Summary: After falling in love, Lena and Alex flee their oppressive society where love is outlawed and everyone must receive "the cure"--an operation that makes them immune to the delirium of love--but Lena alone manages to find her way to a community of resistance fighters, and although she is bereft without the boy she loves, her struggles seem to be leading her toward a new love.

Review: Where Delirium was all heat and passion, Pandemonium is cold and calculating. Lena is a resistance fighter, flashing back to her time outside the city walls in the Wilds. This story telling conceit gives Oliver the opportunity for beautiful contrasts in her prose and world building. Lena herself is aware that she’s shuttered up her old self, become someone hard and cold. Secrets are revealed a bit clumsily (for example, if Oliver is going to spend that much time describing someone who really doesn’t do anything, I know it’s important later) but I didn’t care. The new characters are interesting and fleshed out, especially important with only Lena carrying through with us. Some parts show that this wasn’t really a planned trilogy (major plot points never mentioned in Delirium which should have been) but I’d still follow Lena (and Oliver) anywhere. When’s book three???

I recommend this book to those who liked the first book.