Pandemonium

Lauren Oliver
Book 2 of Delirium trilogy
 Delirium - Book 1
 Requieum - Book 3

Delirium set up the world. Love is the disease and the cure is basically a partial lobotomy that removes "extreme" emotion. At the end of book 1, Lena had escaped from the bordered and controlled world of Portland Maine into the Wilds. In the second volume, we follow Lena as she learns how to live in the Wilds and as she becomes integrated into the organized resistance against the cure. I am interested to observe that the world created by Oliver, were people truly believe that love is a disease, is a particularly insidious. That is, how do you fix this problem. We see hints here, that even when confronted with truth, people will still see love as a disease. They must simply be willing to accept infection. So to initiate large scale revolution, you must change the thinking of people who have already been cured (everyone over 18) as well as overcome the "fact" of the disease (which has been truth for over a generation). This is not just an "unlock the gate" problem like we see in Hunger Games or Inferior. Instead, it becomes a massive PR/social re-education problem. How does a rag-tag resistance movement initiate such change? This second book on its own is good enough as it lets us see into the life of the resistance and the Wild. But it really has me interested in a resolution. Well done.

Rating: Read