5.7.12

Book Review: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

February 28th, 2012
HarperTeen
375 pages (Hardcover)
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.
A girl I used to take dance classes with called this book "a waste of paper" on her Facebook.  Uhm, what?  You can't be serious.  Okay, so a couple things annoyed me, but, damn, did I like this book.

The structure was frustrating at first.  The book flips between "Then" and "Now", and it took nearly the whole book for me to get used to that.  I mean, the events aren't hard to separate, but I found it just messed with the flow of the book.

Then I couldn't keep track of the characters in the "Then" chunks.  Plus, the only one I held ANY interest in was Hunter, who there was not nearly enough of.  I wanted more Hunter.  And more character development here.

Yet, with an ending like this one had, I was left wanting so much more.  Seriously, that was brutal.  Just when I started to REALLY like Julian...

Much love, Samantha  

2 comments:

  1. This is NOT a waste of paper. I was annoyed by Lena in the first book, but I liked her more here. And that ending was literally jaw-dropping!

    I really liked the Then and Now component myself. I wonder if the last one will go back to regular "now". Why do we need to wait so long!?

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    Replies
    1. The ending was crazy! I don't think she'll continue with the then and now thing, but I can't see the story just going back to a "now" style. I think she'll likely change it up again, which could be fun!

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