Pandemonium

Pandemonium

      Pandemonium, by Lauren Oliver, is the second book in the Delirium series. In the quake of the death of Alex the book begins with Lena running in the Wilds, she has no idea where she is going, but she is doing what Alex told her to, run. Lena eventually passes out and she wakes up with people around her, she is a in an underground home. Raven, the leader of the people living there, takes care of Lena. When Lena is well enough, she begins working, hauling buckets, cleaning, although it takes much work and hassling from Raven. Lena slowly begins to feel like that is her home, until one day when she is checking for signals from the sympathizers inside the city, red, red means run, as Lena runs towards camp the bombs begin. Most of the campers survive, and Lena, Raven, and Tack, a camper who is really close to Raven, all decide to live in disguise in one of the city's. Once there, Lena is given a mission, to help out the rebels, she has to follow Julian, the son of the founder of the club that reminds people of the importance of the cure. When the scavengers, people who don't believe in the cure, but resort to violence, unlike the Invalids, attack, Julian is kidnapped along with Lena. eventually they escape, but not before they fall in love. Lena finds Raven and Tack and learn that this was all a test to see if she was deserving to really join the rebel group, of course she passed, but she isn't sure she wants in. Lena wants to take Julian and live in the Wilds with him, like she was going to do with Alex, and go back to the old camp, where she met Raven and Tack, and live with all her old friends, but Raven won't allow it. Julian is taken to be cured, and Lena need to find him to help him escape, when Lena gets to the hospital she finds Raven and Tack, who came to help  her after all. Lena breaks Julian out, and learns that her mother, who was thought to commit suicide was really alive, and had been in prison, and broke out. When Raven, Tack, Lena, and Julian are getting ready to escape the city and go back to the Wilds, Raven brings in a boy who had been in the same prison as Lena's mom, and was going to help Lena answer questions about her. It's Alex, he's alive, he was taken to prison, he was never killed. That's what Pandemonium, by Lauren Oliver, is about.

      Lena is a completely different character in this book than she was in Delirium. The pain of losing Alex has made her so much stronger, and the fog blocking the reality of the real world is gone and she knows now what confusing really is and what it really feels like to be sad. Also, I felt like it wasn't Alex that Lena fell in love with in Delirium, I think she could have fallen in love with anyone that loved her, because she didn't know what love was, it was the pure fact that Alex knew he loved her and showed her what it was like to truly love somebody. This time, Lena isn't as quick to like Julian, she doesn't have any interest in him until she really gets to know him, unlike Alex who she starts dating without knowing anything about him. Also Lena is not annoying anymore, while she toughened up in the Wilds she grew up and she isn't so fickle anymore, she is quicker to know what she wants. Lena is a better, more improved character in Pandemonium, and is completely different from what she was like in Delirium.

      One theme I found in the book is survival. I think survival is one of the themes in Pandemonium because Lena is constantly fighting for her life. One example of this is when she is thrust in the world of the Wilds, with no Alex to care for her, and be by her side, Lena must fight for herself, and when she is threatened to be kicked out of the homestead she must do her share of the work. Lena also has to fight for her life when she is very sick and must fight to get better. Another example of survival is when Lena and Julian are kidnapped, Lena must be resourceful and adapt to her new environment, and find a way to escape. Lena also has to find a way for her love for Julian to survive, and she has to keep him in love with her. While reading this book, I saw Lena in life or death situations all the time, and every time she over comes them, that's what makes her so strong. That's why I think survival is one of the themes in the book, Pandemonium.

      I loved the book, Pandemonium, even more than Delirium. Although I found Delirium to be entrapping and hard to put down, Pandemonium was even more entrapping, and harder to put down. With the Wilds included more in the book there is more violence and action, I found Delirium to be a little dull after reading Pandemonium. I definitely would recommend this book to all girls, although I wouldn't recommend a boy to read it, Pandemonium is the perfect balance between romance and action. I think almost any girl would read this book, and enjoy it. Although it's a little long to some people, it obtains much detail and a great story plot. Overall, I thought Pandemonium was amazing, and engulfing, and I can't wait until Requiem, the third book in the series comes out.

     I love Lauren Oliver's style of writing. I think she has a beautiful voice, and the way she writes the story, it's hard to describe. Lauren has some great dialog in this book that could be used as inspirational quotes. One quote I liked from the book is, "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." I think this quote is perfect for something Lena would say, it holds her attitude and emotions. Another quote I like from Lena is, "Everything you were, the life you had, the people you knew... dust." She shakes her head and says, a little more firmly, "There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next." I love the way Lauren Oliver writes and the quotes she says, and I hope she writes more books so I can read them.

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Eve

Eve

      

 
  Eve, by Anna Carey, is a great fiction novel about a girl named Eve who unveils a great lie in her society. When Eve discovers that when girls graduate high school and supposedly go to college to learn a trade, they're really held hostage and used as birthing monkeys. It's even worse for Eve, since she's her class's valedictorian, she property of the king, meaning she will bear his children.  In this future world men are supposedly evil, except the king, and all they do is abuse and rape women, and create war. When Eve discovers the real truth about her future, she runs a way, looking for a safe camp, she comes upon a fellow classmate, named Arden, who was never nice to Eve, who's also running away. They meet a guy named Caleb, who takes them to his home, when Eve and Arden get there, Arden is very sick, Leif, the leader of the home Caleb lives in, gives Eve and Arden a room. While Arden is sick, Eve begins teaching the little kids living in the home how to read. Eve is still very frightened by Caleb, she knows deep down that he is not going to hurt her, but she has trouble shaking the base of the knowledge she had been taught her entire life. Right as Eve has fallen in love with Caleb, Leif tells someone the king is looking for her and she and Arden are taken. After she is taken, Eve must choose between true love, or life. She chooses true love, and escapes, she stays with a women and her husband who don't agree with the city's new rules and chose to live outside the city with each other, but when Eve tries to send a signal to Caleb, the police track it and find them. Eve and Arden escape, but the woman and husband are killed. Eve finds Caleb and she, Arden, and him go to a different camp, the one she starting her journey looking for. Eventually they get there, but when they do they discover it's an all girls camp and she stays there while Caleb leaves, to protect her. That's what the book, Eve, is about.

      Eve is not like any other character I've read about before. She actually listens in school, unlike most main characters in books. Eve has let the information she was taught in school sink in and, influence her life. I think Eve is really brave, she found out the truth about her city, and ran away, all in the same night. Considering how difficult it would have been to take in that fact that all she was going to do for the rest of her life was give birth the old man, she called a king's babies. Eve is also very intelligent, she survived in the wild all by herself, she had never even been camping and she was just thrust into a completely different world, and she survived. Eve has bright red hair, she is short, and small. I think Eve is an interesting person to read about, although she sometimes is sappy, I think she was a pretty solid main character. That's what Eve, the main character in the book, is like.

      One theme I found in the book, Eve, is obviously love. Eve loved her mother, even though she died, Eve explained this to one of the little kids living in the camp that Caleb lived in, "I loved my mother, too. I still do. That's the thing - it never goes away, even if the person does." Eve also loved Arden, in a way different than her mother, even though Arden was mean to her when they went to school, they bonded, in a way that they couldn't break, during their multiple near death experiences together. Another person that Eve loved was, of course, Caleb. Eve and Caleb had this conversation, "What if I still want to go?" "Then you'll go," he said. "But I wanted you to know the danger." "There's always danger." "His green eyes met mine. I was starting to see it, how it could happen-me and Caleb." Also, Eve thought this, "I loved every part of him. The smell of his skin, the scar on his cheek, the feel of his fingers pressing into my back. The way he could tell what I was thinking just by looking at me." I think that these quotes from Eve make it clear that she loves Caleb. That's why love is one themes in the book, Eve.

      I thought that Eve was a really good book. I think it had a good balance between romance and action, it wasn't round the clock romance, but not constant action either, which I though was a good thing. I would recommend this book to girls, not boys. I think girls that like romance novels would like this book, but girls that find romance sickening should not read this book. Eve is a fairly long book at 376 pages, but those pages go by fast, as you read 75 pages and don't even realize it. Although I found the novel to be overly sappy at times, the action later in the book makes up for it. Overall, I think that Eve was a really good book, and I will read the rest of the trilogy.

      Anna Carey has written other books, not just Eve. First off, there's the second book in the Eve series, Once. Then there's the final book in the trilogy, Rise. Also, Eve was put into a larger novel called Pitch Dark: Dark Days of Fall Sampler, along with books, Supernaturally, Fateful, Cold Kiss, and A Beautiful Dark. I like the things that Anna Carey writes for Eve. I think she writes beautiful quotes, that are inspirational and almost like poetry. One quote I liked from the book Eve was, "Sometimes it feels like all the things I need to know, I don't. And all the things I do know are completely wrong." Another quote from Eve that I liked is, "Loving someone meant knowing your life would be worse without them in it." Those are some other books that Anna Carey has written. 

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(I edited it and put the words on it.)

Delirium

                                Delirium

   
      Delirium, by Lauren Oliver, is a great story about a girl named Lena, who's fighting between her heart and her society.In this future world, love is considered a disease, called amor deliria nervosa. The book begins with Lena counting the days until her brain surgery, to make her immune to falling in love. Lena looks at herself as an in between girl, not pretty, but not ugly. Since Lena's mom committed suicide, because the brain surgery didn't work on her, and they had done the operation on her 3 times and were coming to do it again, Lena lives with her aunt. Lena meets a guy  named Alex, who makes her question whether or not love is a bad thing. When Lena's best friend show signs of being a rebel, Lena gets scared, but she ends up going to an illegal music party with her. As she's about to leave, someone calls her name, Lena turns around to find Alex, they talk, and she agrees to meet him the next day. Lena feels safe around him, he has the procedure mark, he told her he was safe, and he couldn't giver the deliria, or could he? When they're swimming at the beach , Alex tells Lena that he's an Invalid, and lives in the Wilds. After Lena forgives Alex, and stops caring about what her society thinks of her, or if she is labeled a sympathizer they decide to run away together and live in the Wilds. When they meet to gather supplies, the police catch them, Lena is taken home, and put on lock down, but where did Alex disappear to? When Alex comes for Lena on a motorcycle, they escape, they drive to the city's border, Alex convinces Lena to jump over the fence when the motorcycle is in midair, telling her he'll jump right after her. When Lena gets over the fence she sees Alex, he's not jumping over the fence, he's being attacked by the police, Alex is dead, but before he is engulfed by the attackers, he tells Lena to run. That is what the book Delirium, by Lauren Oliver is about.

      Lena is a very interesting character. She obviously doesn't think very much of herself, she always talks about how she isn't ugly, but not pretty. Lena also cannot make up her mind, should I be with Alex, or not, or, should I break the rules? Frankly, I think Lena is a bit of an annoying character to read about. Lena is not good under pressure, "Sometimes I feel as though there are two me's, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she supposed to nod and says what she's supposed to say, and some, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams and says 'gray.'" (Oliver,  ) Lena has dark hair, and her birthday is on September 3. I think Lena is afraid of authority in beginning of the book, because she never does anything wrong and does everything her aunt says, and doesn't act like a normal teenager. Also, when she does do something wrong she acts like she's murdered somebody, but by the end of the book, she's breaking all the rules, and sneaking out, which, I think, makes her less annoying of a character to read. That's what Lena, the main character in Delirium, is like.

       One theme I found in the book is sacrifice. I think sacrifice is one of the themes in the book because Lena sacrificed her whole life to be with Alex. She gave up her family, who would never approve, just to be with him. Also, she gave up the fairy tale of a perfect life with no problems, she could have kept on living the life she was, then had the procedure and she wouldn't even know what love felt like. If she had never agreed to meet him, then she wouldn't have had to go through the pain of losing him, but she sacrificed that too, her emotions, and she gave them to Alex.  Now the biggest sacrifice of all, Alex gave his life for Lena, He knew she would make it far into the Wilds if he distracted the police, he gave his life, knowing she would get to keep hers. That's why I think sacrifice is one of the themes in the book, Delirium.

      I thoroughly enjoyed Delirium, by Lauren Oliver. I found it to be entrapping, and hard to put down. Although some people may look at it and say it's too long, it goes by fast, and when it's over you want more. Even though I found Lena's character whinny and annoying, Delirium was still a really good read. Overall, I thought Delirium was a complete page turner. I would recommend this book to girls looking for something good to read, and doesn't mind a 450 page book. I think this book would appeal to almost any girl, because it has a little bit of everything in it, romance, sci-FY, and action. I enjoyed Delirium and hope to read more books by Lauren Oliver.

      Lauren Oliver has written a lot of books. First of all there's Pandemonium, the second book in the Delirium series. Then there's the third one, Requiem, which comes out in March next year! Lauren Oliver has also written the books Before I Fall, Hanna, Annabel, and Raven. I hope to read some of her other books and will definitely finish the Delirium series. I like Lauren Oliver's style of writing, I find it poetic like and easy to read. Those are some other books by Lauren Oliver.

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