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Here I go again. This book. I just... okay.
To be honest with you, I didn't like this book. In my opinion, it suffers from Second Book Syndrome big-time. It's like everything that started happening in the first book was put on hold, and none of the characters returned for the second installment. Including, but not limited to the main character, Lena.
Sure, she's the narrator in this one, just like she was in Delirium. But she's not Lena. The narrator in this book is, justifiably, someone completely different. She thinks Alex is dead; she's left her old life behind, and she won't let herself think about it. No Hana, no Alex. We get new characters, none of whom are all that fleshed out. I didn't feel an ounce of connection to them.
One of those characters, of course, was Julian Fineman. The new "love interest." It really bothered me that Lena started to fall in "love" with him, and not because she should be holding out for Alex (she thinks he's dead. Okay, fine, move on if that's what you have to do), but because Julian is the first boy who's given her the time of day since she left for the Wilds. It kind of cheapens her relationship with Alex, because it makes you wonder if she'll fall in love with any boy her age who spends time with her**. Julian makes her feel safe, I guess, but at the same time she's constantly protecting him (and we all know my stance on that). He's a little bit weak. I didn't connect with him because he has no personality-- he's a blank slate. Just because we learn about his family/personal history doesn't mean we actually know anything about who he is, what he believes in, who he wants to be. He doesn't even know those things himself, which is what makes it so hard for me to believe that Lena-- now stone-cold, fierce, passionate Lena-- would fall for him.
The whole time she's with Julian, she has to push back thoughts of Alex. Every sentence with his name ripped out my heart and did a little dance on it. Without him, Lena isn't herself anymore; she's him. She becomes Alex, because she thinks there is nobody else in the world to be him. Which, in turn, makes Julian the old Lena, the one Alex fell in love with. The parallels are almost too much, straight from Lena telling Julian "I'm not who you think I am," to her watching him from the observation deck, the way Alex watched her when she went for her evaluation. I just can't help but feel like it's so obvious that Lena only "loves" Julian because she realizes that she's Alex and he's Lena. Because Alex and Lena belong together, not Lena and Julian.
And yet, she's completely in denial about it because she hardly even lets herself think of Alex. Which, ultimately, makes this book extremely disappointing. I'm not anti-love triangle. I'm fine when it's done the right way, but this one is so completely not done the right way. There is no way she is not going to choose Alex, now that he's back in her life and, you know, not dead. I would have been much happier if he had come back in the middle of the book, with some kind of information about her mother, or news that he's been searching for her, or anything. Please, give me a reason why his return had to wait until the very end of the book, other than for the suspense of it. I don't think a single reader ever actually believed he was dead (I certainly didn't).
Basically, this book was a filler. Yes, there was a shift in the main character, toward someone she didn't want to be, and then-- at the VERY END-- toward someone she does want to be. Yes, the resistence is getting stronger. But that's about the extent of the progress that occurs in Pandemonium. So much more could have happened, especially with Alex.
But alas, there is a glimpse of hope at the end. You see, at the end of Delirium, Alex tells Lena to promise she won't look back once she gets near the woods, and she promises-- but she looks back anyway. And at the end of Pandemonium, Julian tells her to promise that they'll stay together, and she promises-- but then Alex pops in and says, "Don't believe her." Because he knows what happens when she makes a promise. BAM. And that is why Alex should have come back sooner.
Also, a comment about the writing: Sometimes the sentences in this book were so beautiful I just wanted to live in them, but other times they seemed extremely forced. Every time Lena feels something, for example, she feels it in her "throat." Like, "nausea rises up in my throat," or "disappointment is a rock in my throat." What? That doesn't even make sense. You're trying too hard, Miss Oliver.
I feel like I need a list of adjectives to sum up this book:
-slow
-muted
-agonizing
-beautiful
-frustrating
-heartbreaking
Overall I give this book 3/5 stars, but two of those stars come from the very last page.
**- I'm pretty sure the sequel to a book isn't supposed to make you question everything that happened in the first book. That is what I hate most about Pandemonium.
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