BEWARE, IT MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!
A while ago I posted my review of Pandemonium‘s prequel, Delirium, and from the moment I picked up that book I loved it. The whole idea of love being considered a disease caught my attention and made me feel like I was living in this dystopian society. The first book ended in a major cliffhanger and next thing you know I was already pre-ordering the sequel, Pandemonium.
While Delirium was set up with excerpts at the beginning of each chapter, Pandemonium is set up with two story lines titled “Then” and “Now“. The chapters titled “Then” start off with what happened to the main character, Lena, once she made it to the Wilds, how she recovered and met other Invalids, trying to get back on her feet and learning how to live with Alex’s absence as well as other people who have been exposed to love. While Lena is at the Wilds, this is where she learns to move on from her past life, that she has to live in the present, whoever she was back then she is now dead. “Now” is about what happens once Lena is fully recovered and becomes part of the resistance inside the country with a new identity and with a fake cure mark on her neck.
While reading the book, Lena stopped being the innocent girl we met in Delirium, here she really learns what it feels like to fight for something you believe in (love), even if it means living with the idea that someone who means everything to you is dead. Which is my main concern for the book. I really liked the pacing, not too fast, not too slow, the story grew darker in the sense that Lena had to make a lot of sacrifices in the Wilds in order for her to become the person she is in the “Now” sections. I’m the type of person that if you tell me any story, I’ll try to figure out the next move, and most times I am beyond delighted once an author proves my theories wrong. However, with Pandemonium I felt like some plot twists were too predictable, but nothing that made me put the book away or anything. I just felt like so much more could have been done. Still, Pandemonium was a great read, this book feeling more like a transition story, I didn’t fall in love with is as quickly as I did with Delirium, BUT I do have to admit that the final 5-7 chapters or so is where everything build up and the ending… I still can’t recover from it. You already know I’ll be pre-ordering the third book!
Do I recommend Pandemonium? Yes! The series to me has the unique idea of a world without love, and as a sequel it works perfectly to show Lena’s transition from this naive girl to an independent woman who stands up for what she believes in.
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*SPOILER ALERT – LET’S GET A DISCUSSION GOING! TO THOSE OF YOU WHO FINISHED THE BOOK POST A COMMENT ABOUT WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF PANDEMONIUM!
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*SPOILER ALERT* We are introduced to the character of Julian, who is very likeable in my opinion, and even sometimes I’d feel like Lena pushing away the thought of Alex being alive just for the sake of I guess, enjoying what she now has with Julian, given the assumption that Alex is dead. However, while everything was all a set up by the Invalids, I wonder how will Julian react to this once he finds out. How did the Invalids know that Julian would fall in love with Lena? Just because you’re put in a room with someone from the opposite sex? And Alex… I wonder what he must have felt once he saw Lena with Julian, because clearly the guy suffered while she moved on. Not going to lie, I expected him coming back at some point in the book because there is no point in the whole series if he’s dead. And here I was thinking this series wouldn’t use a love triangle, but oh well. Also, about Lena’s mother, I knew from the moment she was introduced in the book that she had to be part of the resistance and that she obviously recognized Lena. Hopefully in the third book she can get back with her daughter.
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