Pandemonium is the sequel to Delirium, which I reviewed in an earlier post, and the world of the series has greatly expanded letting us get a better feel of the realm. We no longer see only two stand points on the disease deliria, that of the adults and the children and teens of regulated society, but that of the so called Invalids who are banned and reviled from regular society because they do not wish to receive the cure. The Invalids, now a key part of the story, bring us the opposite view of the cure and how it destroys people and turns them into zombies, which is how they often refer to them, and how they seem to believe that the regulated society must be taken down and destroyed.
At the end of Delirium, Lena escapes from regulated Portland, Maine, but at the cost of losing her boyfriend Alex. In Pandemonium, it begins with Lena in the Wilds taken in by the Invalids as she was teetering on the edge of death not knowing if she wanted to live or die after all she has lost in her quest for love, this section is known as Then. In the second section titled Now, she and her "guardians", Tack and Raven, have infiltrated New York City and are posing as the cured while trying to gain information on the DFA, Deliria-Free America, for the resistance. Lena is assigned to trail Julian Fineman, the son of Thomas Fineman, the head of the DFA, and this results in her getting kidnapped along with him by Scavengers, like Invalids but only cause destruction and chaos, at a DFA rally. They must try and work together to escape.
Ok, I have probably stated this before, but I get easily irritated by books that are constantly switching back and forth between narratives. It can be alright if they switch every few chapter, but they don't it is every 0ther chapter and really some of the chapters are simply pointless and prove nothing to the reader. I get the majority of the "Then" chapters because they are showing how she transformed from a completely weak girl from regulated society where the Cure is everything to a insidious Invalid that will kill if she has to. The "Now" chapters are alright, though, many of them seem to just drag on which does not make for a pleasant read.
The characters in this are different from the ones in the last book in more ways than one, even our main character. Lena in the "Then" chapters is constantly moaning about how weak she is and how she can barely lift the water buckets instead of actually doing something to make herself stronger and really is just dispassionate about everything but her old life. In "Now" she is not moaning about her physical weakness, but is still cut off to what is going on around her, though, this lightens as the story progresses. Also, I find it odd that in "Then" she was crying over having to kill a rabbit but in "Now" kills a girl without so much as a sliver of sympathy, a total 180. I did not really like Julian Fineman's character that much. I get he has cancer and grew up with an overbearing and abusive father, but really his life story is a complete pity train, so, you cannot find much to respect about the character. Also, I do not get how he can be all about the cure one minute and cuddling up to Lena the next. So, the characters really did not win the story for me.
I hated the ending because it was the beginning of my most hated plot device, the love triangle. Seriously, I am tired of seeing young adult novels using this because it is in almost every other book that has a female protagonist. Yes, it has worked in some books, but not all especially because half the time we already no which on is going to be chosen from the beginning, so, it really adds no surprise just useless melodrama that does not add much to the story. Seriously, I was fine with the ending until the last few sentences.
Really, I would not recommend this book to anyone. I would recommend just reading the first book in the series and stop. But, I could be wrong some people might like it.
