I’m push­ing aside the mem­ory of my night­mare, push­ing aside thoughts of Alex, push­ing aside thoughts of Hana and my old school, push, push, push, like Raven taught me to do. 

The old life is dead. But the old Lena is dead too. I buried her. I left her beyond a fence, behind a wall of smoke and flame.

*This review con­tains spoil­ers for Delirium*

Pan­de­mo­nium, the eagerly antic­i­pated sequel to Delir­ium, has been receiv­ing some mixed reviews. Some fans loved it, oth­ers seemed to have been bit­terly dis­ap­pointed and the end­ing alone has cer­tainly pro­voked a strong reac­tion one way or the other from most readers.

I wouldn’t say I was dis­ap­pointed by Pan­de­mo­nium, but then, I was, per­haps, a lit­tle less invested than a lot of fans. I’ve been a fan of Lau­ren Oliver’s writ­ing since I read Before I Die (my favourite of her books). I liked Delir­ium, and I liked Alex, but had it had been revealed that he did died that day sav­ing Lena, I would have admired such a bold move. I was more inter­ested in see­ing how Lena’s char­ac­ter copes with loos­ing Alex and the future choices she makes as a con­se­quence. My enjoy­ment of this series has far more to do with Oliver’s writ­ing, than any intense attach­ment to the characters. There were some lovely pas­sages in the first book that have stayed with me, even if, in the year since I read it, I’d totally for­got­ten the protagonist’s names.

How­ever, I know that there are many read­ers out there who sim­ply love Alex and were des­per­ate to know if he sur­vived, not to men­tion anx­ious for a reunion. So I under­stand why some peo­ple may have been… upset by this sec­ond install­ment. Because Pan­de­mo­nium isn’t about Alex. Nor do we find out what hap­pened to him after he tells Lena to run. Unfor­tu­nately, fans are going to have to wait a whole other year to find out the answers to those questions.

Instead, we see Lena adjust­ing to life in the Wild, a life with­out Alex, and work­ing within the resis­tance. There’s the intro­duc­tion of a new roman­tic interest. The nar­ra­tive in this book is also dif­fer­ent, alter­nat­ing chap­ter by chap­ter between ‘Then’, imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the events of Delir­ium and ‘Now’, months later, where we quickly learn that Lena has re-crossed the fence.

Lena has never been a par­tic­u­larly strong hero­ine for me. She’s gains some sur­vival skills and is phys­i­cally and men­tally stronger in Pan­de­mo­nium, but for what­ever rea­son, I just don’t feel emo­tion­ally con­nected to her. Lena strikes me as a rather needy char­ac­ter. She can’t go it alone. She needs some­one else guid­ing and reas­sur­ing her. In Delir­ium, her depen­dence on Alex was nat­ural. In Pan­de­mo­nium, how­ever much the Wild has tough­ened her up, Lena still needs some­one who can make the tough deci­sions for her. In the absence of Alex, Raven and Tack have become this for her.

I wouldn’t say Lena is a weak char­ac­ter, more that I find her a lit­tle insipid at times. There’s no fire in her. She doesn’t search for answers in regards to Alex’s fate. She never ques­tions whether he is dead or alive. She doesn’t fight back. She even­tu­ally becomes part of the resis­tance (though the actu­ally how, when or why is dis­ap­point­ingly skipped over), but only as an obser­vant. It’s pos­si­ble I have been spoilt by other authors who have writ­ten some of my favourite char­ac­ters, under­cover females with a wit, intel­li­gence and fierce spirit that Lena just seems to lack. I felt the cli­max of the book epit­o­mizes Lena per­fectly. In the end, she doesn’t go back to attempt a res­cue, she goes to say good­bye to some­one. It is Raven who goes in fight­ing despite the over­whelm­ing odds, and that’s what I really wanted from Lena. She is com­pas­sion­ate, capa­ble and above all, a sur­vivor. I’m just not con­vinced yet that she’s a fighter.

There are sev­eral new char­ac­ters intro­duced, though I don’t feel we get to know them too well. Pan­de­mo­nium is more about Lena’s per­sonal jour­ney. As the poster boy of the DFA (Delirium-Free Amer­ica), Julian brings a poten­tially inter­est­ing new angle to the tril­ogy. He is very much like the Lena we know in Delir­ium: quiet, shel­tered, prej­u­dice and young. My main com­plaint with Pan­de­mo­nium would be that Julian sim­ply doesn’t have the pres­ence that Alex had and his feel­ings for Lena felt rushed and unfounded.

Oliver also gives us a bet­ter pic­ture of the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. Ten­sions are ris­ing and things have dras­ti­cally changed since Lena escaped. The Wilds and the exis­tence of Invalids liv­ing out­side the fence is no longer being denied by the Uni­fied Church of Reli­gion and Sci­ence. The resis­tance is get­ting louder and their strate­gic attacks have pro­voked a strong reac­tion from the Cured in the form of the DFA, who are now vying for the Cure to admin­is­tered to chil­dren despite the dan­gers. Then there are the Scav­engers who, like the resis­tance, want a Cure-free world, and are happy to resort to dan­ger­ous and vio­lent means to get it. Through­out the book Lena’s world view is increas­ingly shaken up and expanded and it’s clear that Oliver is paving the way for a full-out rebel­lion in book three.

In many ways this feels a lit­tle like a filler book, with large parts of the story being some­what pre­dictable. Look­ing back, I think Pan­de­mo­nium is set­ting up impor­tant plot lines for what I hope, and believe, could be a bril­liant finale.

This is a solid read, let down by a half­hearted romance and the sink­ing sus­pi­cion that unavoid­able angst will be rear­ing its ugly head in the future. The story feels a lit­tle rushed, I would have liked a slower, more intense plot, but the last page deliv­ers a killer end­ing. A must-read for fans of the series, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Pan­de­mo­nium lacks that spe­cial some­thing that really made Delir­ium stand out.