Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

I plowed through this book, seriously flew through it! My reaction when I finished reading what I thought was just a chapter and flipped to the next page looking for more--its over, no more! Such is the torture of reading all but the last book of a trilogy or series! A necessary evil complicated by the fact that I was reading this on my NOOK and not paying attention to page numbers of the fact that there was a reader's guide and such at the end.

Anyway, on to the book!

Obviously I enjoyed the book, or I wouldn't have read it so quickly and be hungry for more. I struggled to settle in to it at first. This book switches between flashbacks of the time right after the end of Delirium and about 6 months or so past that, which is the present. But that becomes more fluid pretty quickly.

Lena is seen processing the events she just experienced in the flashbacks, and acclimating to her new reality and the people and conditions that populate that reality. In the present she has become a part of the resistance and is poised on the edge of her next big challenge, and the change that will come with it. I enjoyed watching her continue to grapple with what she has left behind her, her "now," and her sense that her future is now fully out of her control.

As i'd hoped, the author further builds and fleshes out the world this story is set in during this book. We see other cities, others Wilds, other people--both similar to, and wildly different from, the people and factions we have seen so far. It becomes clearer how misguided the government is, bent on a sort of purification of the populace as a whole. Elimination of things, and people, who do not fit their sense of order and purity. Awful concepts start to spring in to my mind like eugenics, gentrification and even genocide, though with a hands of approach, letting those less desirable struggle to find sustenance and safety--a sort of survival of the fittest set up with the fittest being chosen, not destined.

I can't wait to get my hands on Requiem! And I am adding Delirium Stories to my "To Be Read" pile, it has 3 stories, each delving further in to the stories of women in Lena's life--Annabel, Hana and Raven.