Review Detail

I picked up Delirium even though the synopsis wasn't particularly appealing to me. I got the impression that it was more of a love story than anything else really.

When you pick up a first book in a trilogy, you need to understand that the characters you meet in it aren't the author's completed portrait of them, just their beginnings.

That's why I wasn't too upset over how childish(and dimwitted) Lena was in this book. because I knew that she was sure to learn from her mistakes in the next two installments.

as I read though, what really irritated me was that the author had copied some key elements of the book from 1984 by George Orwell; I don't mean common cultural property like the idea of a dystopian society where a rigid government keeps everyone in line by monitoring their every thought and action and delivering severe punishments for tiny infractions.

I mean things like..The coffee

In Lena's household, they drink bad weak coffee. They drank bad coffee in 1984 as well.

The Invalids=The proles

like all dystopians, there are a group of people who rebel against the current authority or somehow live out of its reach. here, they are the uncureds. People who refuse to receive brain surgery to make them immune to love(and passive automatons) and choose to live outside the city borders.

Ring a bell?
Maybe because you've read it before in Uglies by scott Westerfeld

another part that was similar to uglies: Lena, the protagonist and narrator has a best friend named Hana. Her friend doesn't believe in the cure and alludes to the possibility of life outside the city confinements.

i couldn't help but think of Shay.

when Lena and Alex go to The Wilds they come across a street filled with wrecked cars left over form The Blitz. In an almost exact replica of the part in uglies where the abandoned cities have cars jamming up the roads like trophies of a time gone by.

once I got past these, something else stopped me: there are a lot of things in this books that weren't given enough attention.

In the beginning Lena explains that she an Hana have a secret handshake code: "two short pumps, two long ones". later in the book when this comes up the long pumps come before the short ones.

I know it's borderline obsessive to hold a grudge over hand pumps but little things make or break a book. That's just the way it is.

in another part of the book, Lena goes to the beach, takes off her shoes and walks on the sand. when she goes swimming her shoes are mentioned several times as having become heavy with water, but when

she swims to shore she "grabs her shoes" and leaves.

It's entirely possible that she took them off after getting out of the water and just held them and walked barefoot, but wouldn't it be nicer if all this confusion had been avoided?

Things like this just get in my face. I can't get past them.

Have you ever had this friend who almost completely forgets you exist once her boyfriend shows up? that's kinda the way Lena treats Hana. After helping her and Alex stage a few undercover dates, she is not mentioned for a very long time. Long enough for you to notice that she's missing.

Later, Lena [ Goes over the fence with Alex to see what The Wilds are like and completely forgets that this is the kind of thing you share with your best friend. Especially the best friend who's shown enormous interest of going to said Wilds. (hide spoiler)]

at this point I just had to face it. Lena is a crappy friend.

it wasn't until the last hundred pages of this book that I stopped marking things that bugged me with post-its and actually started being involved int he story. I can understand what people mean when they say Delirium has a slow start.

but despite all these things I can't say I hated this book. I hated the stupid things that could have been fixed or refined in it. It was an absorbing story. If a book inspires me to read its successor then I'm happy.

and then the ending happened..

I still have no idea how I feel about that ending. All I can say is I like things that make me both angry and buzzing with excitement at the same time.