Review Detail

A forewarning: No amount of reviews will equate to proper preparation for the sheer emotion, as bloody and gaping as any severe wound, and as equally striking, living in Pandemonium. The beauty of this sequel is so horribly, tortuously perfect, as sweetly poignant as letting go of someone important, or watching a younger sibling standing up on his or her own two feet, no longer needing a guiding hand, or leaving behind family to catch one's dreams. Necessary, exhilarating, and painful. Pandemonium is a never-ending punch to the gut, a beating we continue to beg for because it's the only way to keep the story alive and close, to peel away what bars us from the heartwrenching truth. The tears are relief from the intensity, soothing the grief coiled tight inside. And then joy slips in as well, surfacing in fresh love and purpose for our wonderful heroine, but sorrow is never too far behind in tribute to the tragedy that brought us all here, a deadly, flourishing seedling that began in Delirium's end.

We remember being sick and angry, hurt swelling in staggering, destructive tsunamis at our core for the shattering final moments of Delirium, so we are rightfully wary of what flavors we'll taste in this next chapter of Lena's life. Will we find sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness or a combination of the lot? Will we be able to bear savoring the journey that brought Lena to the present and the one that helped her escape the past without fighting the urge to toss Pandemonium across the room? Reasonable questions that instigate the darkest thoughts of our minds, projecting images of the horrors that could potentially unfold, though we attempt to ignore the warnings.

Alternating between chapters of then and now, we are privy to Lena's rebirth, like watching a snake shedding its old skin, the new skin vulnerable at first, then toughening over time. Even after all her loss and hurt, however, Lena never drifts away, the person she is refusing to flee and leave behind an empty, impenetrable shell incapable of anything light and beautiful. Instead she takes her pain, her anger, her needs and morphs them into the driving force that brings her to where she is today. Pushing away her old life, burying the blockage of dark memories, and shifting into a stronger girl, Lena now embodies what it means to survive—the hard voyage and the end result. The plot never suffers for all the switching to and fro Pandemonium does; it serves as the perfect frustration, wonderful, trying, and inescapable. The story veers and flies and trips, catching on a heartwrenching moment at just the right time, pinwheeling into an emotional freefall and sucking us down with it as it drops.

Questions, questions, questions, beating, beating, in our heads, on our hearts, breathing all over every turn of the story. And the romance: revival, a new breath, a desirous need, happiness after wallowing in the forever black of our—ours and Lena's—shared sorrow. We fall in love anew, unable to compare two stories, two souls, two Lenas because they're both so lovely, delivering different feelings, tearing us in jagged bewildered halves. Bleeding, always bleeding, for Lena, for extra characters essential to her life, for the ones in her past that have no place in the now. For devastating choices, heart-numbing deaths, the emotionless herd of civilians that can't care, zombies that don't eat flesh but the love of their children, the untouched youth, the dying and deformed, the incurables.

Lauren's words, so fragile and flowing in a hardened world, with heartless people, are throbbing feelings that seep in and find room in our stuffed, close-to-brimming hearts. The importance of this fight for love, for choices and freedom, so profound in the stories of each new person we 'meet,' in relationships just formed. Hearts battered, souls weary, expressions seemingly immune to shock now, hope lifted, we stumble into the ending and shock once again takes us, punches us, pushes us to our knees, because the unthinkable drains us of thought, breath, and heartbeats.

Once, Lauren Oliver damaged us in Delirium, not quite destroying, but with those final sentences in Pandemonium, she masterfully wields a dagger of distress and impact, targets what's left of us, and becomes the perfect murderer.

Originally posted at Paranormal Indulgence, 3/6/12