littleread1
Written on Feb 26, 2019
Love, the deadliest of all deadly things.
It kills you when you have it.
And when you don't.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.Pandemonium is a poignant, explosive, recklessly romantic and utterly heartbreaking novel. Like Delirium, the first in the compelling trilogy, it will take you to the very edge. That's all you need to know. We'll let Lena do the rest of the talking . . .
- ISBN10 1444722921
- ISBN13 9781444722925
- Publish Date 1 March 2012 (first published 28 February 2012)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 29 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
- Imprint Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 336
- Language English
Reviews
cornerfolds
Written on Feb 9, 2019
Actual rating: 4.5 stars
*Review to come!*
Artemis
Written on Oct 1, 2015
Kim Deister
Written on Dec 19, 2014
Everything about Lena's life has turned on edge since she escaped to the Wilds. Her character arc is great as she struggles to adapt to her new world. Life there is so different from everything that she has known before and change is necessary. She becomes strong, physically and mentally, and creates family out of strangers. I love how real the characters are. Some of those in the Wilds have spent most of their lives there. They are fully adapted to the ways and customs of living in a world of survival and chaos. But there are the others that spent much of their lives in the valid cities. No matter what their reasons for escaping into the Wilds may have been, no matter what it was that they were fleeing, it is clear that it is hard to get past the teachings of the valid cities. Those teachings linger even as they form new families and new societies.
The romance factor for Lena takes a new turn and, even now that I have finished, I am still not sure how I feel about it. But there was so much sweetness and humanity about it and that I loved.
There was a lot more action in this book, and I loved it. More than in Delirium, you could really get a sense of the dangers of the Wilds and living in the ways that these people must. It was fascinating!
Things to love...
--The action! --Lena and her character's growth. --Julian and how his character changed.
Things I wanted more/less of...
--For most of the book, it was Alex. But then...!
My Recommendation
I love this series and this is a great installment in the series.
catiebug
Written on May 30, 2014
The book started off great, then half way through it got can't-put-it-down great. It was very fast paced and had so much going on. There was a lot of stuff that was very predictable and I saw coming, but that didn't take away from it at all.
Chelsea
Written on Apr 7, 2013
I did not like the whole Julian situation. You just fell in love with one guy and you think he’s dead but you’re not sure so you go after the next guy you see. That’s not really how it works. That’s probably my biggest no for this book. I was pretty happy with the rest of the characters though. I just didn’t like the whole Lena/Julian thing.
I still really like the world the author created. It’s a new and cool idea and I was fairly happy with it in this book. The plot wasn’t bad, it moved along nicely and I wasn’t expecting a lot that happened. At the end though this was an average book but it was a really good sequel. I’d recommend it.
Angie
Written on Mar 31, 2013
I felt bad for Lena in Pandemonium. She spent most of her life fed the lies about deliria and was essentially a poster child for the cure until she met Alex. Now she's been transformed into the poster child for the resistance. However, things aren't going how she expected, and she's fed even more lies but for a different reason. She is again blindly following a cause that she doesn't really understand, but I think her grief over losing Alex has something to do with that. She's seeking revenge, and she's much more wild than old Lena was.
Pandemonium was not as good for me as Delirium. The alternating time was interesting, since I enjoyed seeing life in the Wilds, but other than that, nothing really new is added. There's a new complication, of course, but I don't feel like it was necessary. The plot feels like it took one step back instead of forward, which bothers me. Middle of a Trilogy Syndrome strikes again!
The biggest problem for me came on page 355, but let's back up a bit. We meet a new character early on, Julian, the son of a high ranking politician. I immediately got worried there would be a love triangle with this new character. But can it really be considered a love triangle if one person is presumed dead? I don't know, but I didn't like it, since they had just met. However, things were fine with this relationship between Lena and Julian in the beginning. They're thrown in a high stress situation, Lena misses Alex, and Julian has never experienced love before, so it makes sense for them to at least have some kind of presumed feelings. Then the L word pops up on page 355 and ruined it. I like love triangles most of the time, but this one felt thrown in for the sake of having one. No thanks.
I mostly enjoyed Pandemonium, even though it didn't meet the first book's level of awesomeness. I loved seeing how life is in the Wilds, and we meet two other groups of uncured, which was interesting. All three groups are very different, and just show how screwed up this new America is. The ending was a cliffhanger, but not shocking at all. I expected it from the very beginning, but I am excited to see how that affects the next book. Luckily, I have it in my possession, so I don't have to wait!
Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.
mbtc
Written on Feb 28, 2013
Ashley
Written on Nov 18, 2012
Book Nook — Young Adult book reviews
Pandemonium and I have a rocky relationship. It took me like two days to get through 150 pages. Finally, about halfway through the book, things started to pick up, and at least become more interesting, but at the end of the day, I'm still not crazy about the book.
The story switches between two different time periods: "then" (immediately after book two) and "now" (a few months later). At first I didn't really like all the jumping back and forth, but I quickly grew accustomed to it. It is interesting to be able to compare and contrast Lena from then and Lena now, and see how she grows and changes.
I have two big problems with Pandemonium. My first problem is that I feel like nothing happens until the last 50 pages. The first part of the book is just a bunch of travelling, waiting, meeting a few new people, more travelling, clawing through the Wilds, waiting in some sort of underground holding cell, more waiting, a bit of talking... You get the picture. To be blunt: it was boring.
And my next big problem is Julian. The author didn't make me fall in love with him. Somehow Lena did, but I didn't. And honestly, I don't even know why Lena thinks she loves Julian. If you ask me, she only "loves" him due to 1) a lack of options and 2) she so desperately misses Alex and wants that emotional closeness that she's clinging onto the first new guy her age that comes along. I feel like there wasn't even a falling in love phase; Lena just woke up one day and decided she loved Julian. They had like 5 half-mumbled conversations throughout the whole book and suddenly they're in love? Okay, they saved each others' lives once.. but there wasn't that sweet, passionate, slow-brewing romance that we had in Delirium. In Delirium, Lena and Alex had 'moments'. They had cute scenes where they fell in love. They shared poetry, adventure, stories, memories. With Julian, I felt like Lena just shared two nights with him in a prison cell and one night in a bed and then suddenly they were head over heels for each other... Where did that come from?
Pandemonium does end on a huge cliffhanger, but it didn't totally wow me for the sole reason that I saw it coming. It is pretty easy to guess what happens. Although I am really curious to see how the story progresses, I was missing that big *BANG* of an ending because I wasn't shocked or shaken.
Ultimately, Pandemonium felt very much like that second-book-in-a-trilogy filler book. It was all about biding time until we can wrap things up in book three. To be fair, the last quarter of Pandemonium was entertaining—it wasn't boring like the first half was. My main problem with the book is just that I got zero passion from Lena's relationship with Julian, and that was the biggest part of the book.
violetpeanut
Written on Aug 17, 2012
That's all I have to say about the ending of this book. In a good way. It's one of those endings that has you saying "No way!" while at the same time you were secretly hoping for it to happen the whole time.
This second book in the series started off slow for me. In terms of plot, things move a little slowly in the first half while we find out what happened to Lena in the time after she escapes Portland. We learn more about the "Invalids" and how they live. There is more world-building. All of this is interesting and necessary but the book really gets going in the second half which has a lot more action.
In terms of character, we see a lot of Lena's progression from soft, sheltered, whiny girl to hard, competant, strong and smart. She still has an emotional vulnerability that draws the reader in without being too angsty. I loved Julian! It was refreshing for me to see a male character who is vulnerable and emotional while still remaining masculine. He really became a favorite of mine.
I started off thinking I was going to rate this about a 3 but after finishing I give this a solid 4 stars. I'm very much looking forward to the third book in the trilogy!