Panda-Monium (FunJungle, 4)

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I don't know how you all survived the past year without raiding Oliver's home and/or holding her publisher at gunpoint for an ARC, but I'm so glad I don't have to prove my non-existent patience with this one, because frankly, I about died reading that last chapter. When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day. Next are the Scavengers. They are almost similar to the resistant Invalids: uncured. But the thing about them is that they take no sides. They live to destroy and to steal, but you could easily buy their loyalty.

However, I am now a cynical 25 year old, and books like this don't affect me. YA has come a long way since this was released, and I just noticed a lot of flaws (for me anyway).We are reunited with Lena. She has escaped to the Wild's without Alex. Oh, I'm sure you remember that dreadful ending in Delirium and Alex is still nowhere in sight. Lena suspects he's dead even though she doesn't want to say it out loud. She imagines he's still with her and goes out on her own. I have to admire Oliver for the creative spin she placed on American society when establishing this dystopian world. She managed to create a plausible universe in which love had been almost completely eradicated. I felt a pang of sorrow each time Oliver highlighted the emotionless shell of a community in which parents exhibited no compassion for their children and married couples exchanged no signs of affection for one another. Such examples reveal the underlying theme: a life without love is not worth living. Un final que probablemente todos los lectores esperábamos, pero que llega en el peor momento. Ya he comenzado la entrega final, porque no quiero que me pase lo mismo de olvidar cómo me hizo sentir esta novela, y para ver cómo la autora soluciona lo que ha desencadenado y saber si por fin se alejará un poco de sus personajes y abordará el sistema detrás de esta distopía.

Before reading Pandemonium, I really doubted that this book could follow up to Delirium and its (tragic) ending. There had just been too many shitty sequels that could make me enthusiastic about reading them. But I really should've known better than to doubt Lauren Oliver.Another thing I did not pay enough attention to before (because I was eagerly rushing trough the story) is the small fragments of society – the quotation of official documents, rules and regulations, children’s songs, and poetry, which help the reader to mentally construct and imagine the world that Lauren Oliver has created. Even though the story mostly focuses on Lena and Alex’s relationship and the things they discover about each other, we’re constantly aware that they live in a restrictive and severely controlled society. Last, but not least, the motorcycle. While I do love me some hero riding in on a white horse or, in place of that, a shiny motorcycle, there needs to be at least a bit of dialogue on how this happened. How about, "Where did you get this?" shouted over the sound of the engine with, "Stole it!" as a reply. At least give me this much or earlier in the book tell me he has a motorcyle. This came out of nowhere, almost a deus ex machina or, in this case, deus ex motorcycle. Summer started for the women’s changing room, where she’d left her dry clothes. “Let’s move it. Li Ping’s gonna be here soon.”

Delirium takes you on the journey of Lena, a normal girl in a loveless society, who is soon immersed in the unthinkable, has found herself facing the most deadly thing ever known to mankind. Love. Lena begins to explore this completely new and forbidden emotion. An emotion that people shun and fear. An emotion that could get her killed. And in the end, she is tried more than she could have possibly imagined. My heart breaks for her, and yet it soars with hers as she discovers this whole new, enthralling world. Lena is the result of a child­hood that had a mother who loves her and responded accord­ingly to her needs, but other chil­dren in the soci­ety didn’t receive this – some­thing that I felt was a huge cope-out. What about the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a per­son who wasn’t loved? Who was a prod­uct of the sys­tem? I feel like this wasn’t exam­ined enough – wasn’t inspected enough. Like it was han­dled by some­one who just assumed that chil­dren would still reflect some mod­icum of nor­mal­ity after being raised in a world where they aren’t being lov­ingly raised by peo­ple prop­erly attached to them. And the assump­tion that you can have attach­ment with­out love – it’s mind bog­gling because I kind of feel like she was out of her depth on this one. I yanked on my dry clothes and exited the changing room. “How could someone else have taught the dolphins to do anything? No one has access to the dolphins except the trainers, right?” Even if the book was boring to death, I guess I was enjoying it because Lauren's characters has the same perspective on the world just like me.

Hobbies

What I liked best about the first book is completely gone from this one. First, I really thought the chapter headings being reading from The Book of SHHH and others added a lot of understanding and entertainment to the first book. None of that is in this one. I will,” Olivia said. “But I’m worried they might not take me seriously. Having a dolphin stealing bathing suits probably won’t seem like a very high priority to them. So I figure every little bit helps.” But I was so very, very excited for this that I think I was even more let down by it than Matched, which was also something I was eager for. Before I Fall was fresh and compelling, and I felt like so much of Oliver, so much heart and so much work, went into it. I didn't feel the same about Delirium. I'm not going to accuse Oliver of selling out or hopping on a trend, but I do wonder how much passion was behind this story. It seemed sort of sloppy (and yes, I know, I read an ARC, and that may account for some of it). But there were so many inconsistencies and questions I had that I couldn't ever commit. I could only go along so far until logic would intrude. I would be forced to ask myself things like, If Lena was just bitten (badly) in the leg by a dog, why does Alex kissing her seem to erase not only any pain, but even any mention of the bite, until it's like an afterthought? How does her family not notice that either a) she's wearing pants in the middle of sweltering August, and limping, or b) she's not wearing pants and the scar is showing and she's limping? Because it has to be one of those 2 things. And though the "cure" may not make them care for her safety so much, it doesn't take away their suspicious natures. [Also, setting aside the fact that she walked home, how did they just walk home? Just like that. With raiding parties everywhere, and her bitten terribly, they just strolled on home, illegally, down the street? How do they get away with all the shit they get away with, in this repressive society? Hmm...] Things like this were peppered throughout the story, and they just made it nearly impossible to buy in to what was going on. Lena and Julian end up getting captured during one of the meetings and thrown in a room together. They spend days in that room, getting to know each other slowly and awkwardly. They think they have nothing in common at first except that she has been cured (she lies) and he is to be cured soon. He wants to know what it will feel like, will all temptations be taken away? Will he feel like a different person?

Something I can add to this is that Delirium while it focuses on love, your first love to be specific, I thought Pandemonium focused a little bit more on hate, anger and healing. It certainly showed us a new side to Lena that we never saw before. The combination of her new life and losing Alex has made her get in touch with emotions that would have been closed up to her before, and it is very interesting to see how she manages navigates through her new life. If there’s one thing that I learned from Pandemonium, it was that pain is not the end but the beginning, and in the darkest of nights, you’ll find the stars brightest. Delirium is a dystopian young adult novel written by Lauren Oliver, published on January 1, 2011, by HarperCollins (HarperTeen). The story focuses on a young woman, Lena Haloway, who falls in love in a society where love is seen as a disease. Delirium is the first novel in a trilogy, followed by Pandemonium, and Requiem. Oliver, Lauren (January 23, 2013). "ANNOUNCING THE DELIRIUM TV SERIES!". Tumblr . Retrieved March 2, 2013. Oh yeah. So, Lena has escaped into the Wilds to hang out with other rebel people. Alex has supposedly died. Although Lena has now gotten away from the cure, there's still a matter of freeing everyone else from it. So, she and her new friends set out to do that. On top of that, Lena starts to fall in love with someone new ...Ladies and gentlemen, I would just like you to know that I am screaming. That's what this book made me feel like. I finished it, and these were my thoughts: I loved Delirium and I was left crying at the end. I loved Pandemonium even more, and I was left wanting to cry but at the same time, wanting to tell her how genius she is!