Delirium: 1/3 (DELIRIUM TRILOGY)

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I know I'm late. Like, really late. So many people have already read this and given an overall very good rating.

That’s my limit. That’s when I start get­ting frus­trated and annoyed. And it’s not because an author tried some­thing new, okay? Lau­ren Oliver is AMAZING. She is a great author who is eru­dite and ver­bose and inter­est­ing to lis­ten to. I’ve seen her speak live and frankly to an audi­ence and her abil­ity to relate to them and express her­self is fantastic. I did like the characters. I've heard the complaint that Lena has no personality and I think that's true, but she lives in a society that having no personality is considered a good thing. No one is encouraged to be different or have interests or feel passionate about anything so the fact that she's fairly unformed makes sense for the world she lives in. When she finally makes her choices, her life opens up and she finds a strength in herself. The focus of the story, and an excuse to write this dystopia, is, of course, a romance. I wish I could say I enjoyed at least this aspect of Delirium, but I didn't really. It is mildly more exciting than the one in Matched, slightly steamier, and at least doesn't have a love triangle (yet). But there is still a self-insert main character (shy, ordinary, plain) and the main male emo squeeze, quoting poetry, who falls for her anyway. I am exhausted by this arrangement.Delirium takes you on the journey of Lena, a normal girl in a loveless society, who is soon immersed in the unthinkable, has found herself facing the most deadly thing ever known to mankind. Love. Lena begins to explore this completely new and forbidden emotion. An emotion that people shun and fear. An emotion that could get her killed. And in the end, she is tried more than she could have possibly imagined. My heart breaks for her, and yet it soars with hers as she discovers this whole new, enthralling world. So a day before the release of Pandemonium, I finally get around to reading Delirium. And after that devastating ending, my relief knows no bounds. I don't know how you all survived the past year without raiding Oliver's home and/or holding her publisher at gunpoint for an ARC, but I'm so glad I don't have to prove my non-existent patience with this one, because frankly, I about died reading that last chapter. This book focuses on a future society where love has been outlawed, and humans are cured of their ability to love at age sixteen. Lauren Oliver develops this concept into a terrifying yet realistic world; it's not hard to understand why the characters think of this world as a utopia. Sure, they have somewhat restricted freedom, but when their religion and all their elders believe so firmly in protecting them from love, how can they disagree?

I can continue to write about how much this book is amazing and about the genuine idea of it, but in any case I don't have too much time and I really want to move to the second book. The narrative voice is flowing, steady, and easy to follow. It was just interesting enough to keep you reading to find out what happens next.

In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forward to being cured and living a safe, predictable life. She watched love destroy her mother and isn't about to make the same mistakes. Alex wants to show Lena that her mother is actually alive. He brings her to the Crypts, where people who do not obey the rules stay, to show her that her mother is still alive. When they find her mother's room, they find it empty, with a life-size hole in the wall where the letter 'O' is in the word LOVE.

I never thought I’d say this because, in my mind, Oliver is – and always will be – a fan­tas­tic writer. But there were aspects of the writ­ing in this book that were obvi­ous, cliche and sim­plis­tic. For exam­ple, Lena is emo­tion­ally stunted but it’s an obvi­ous par­al­lel. When­ever she feels intense emo­tion she blames it on the air con­di­tion­ing or weather etc. She is the result of a child­hood of emo­tional detach­ment – but not really – and this is where it gets per­sonal for me. The original concept of this book was at first compelling and interesting. The idea that love is a disease that has, in the near future, been cured. The fact that love has been classified as "the most deadly of deadly things" and that the government is sanctioning and actually requiring all citizens to undergo a lobotomy at the age of 18. After which they will be assigned a mate. The original concept is a bit incredible, but I am actually ok with “incredible” as long as it is portrayed in a believable way. And for the most part, it was. As the book progressed however, I kept finding undeniable parallels to Matched and Uglies.Oliver, Lauren (January 23, 2013). "ANNOUNCING THE DELIRIUM TV SERIES!". Tumblr . Retrieved March 2, 2013. The main pro­tag­o­nist says the word “love” twice. Once in con­ver­sa­tion and the sec­ond time men­tally. Love is a con­cept that’s stig­ma­tized to such an extreme degree that even the whis­pered word “sym­pa­thizer” is ver­boten. Yet the main pro­tag­o­nist SAYS it to her aunt – that she LOVES chil­dren. It just doesn’t make sense. And she’s wan­der­ing around with Alex and mak­ing out with him in pub­lic like the con­se­quence for that is a slap on the wrist. Look, she lives in a highly auto­cratic world where even a hint of the dis­ease will land you in prison – and she makes out with her boyfriend in the mid­dle of pub­lic places. It may sound superficial to you, but once he said his name was Alex, he almost took a little place in my heart. I didn't like him right away, of course. (I'm not that weird) (Or maybe I am) but I love the name Alex so much, and I enjoyed every time Lena said his name. (I never came across the name Alex in a book at the past, except once, and he was a shitty person.) Set in a dystopian Portland, Maine, the novel tells the story of Lena, 17, just before she receives a life-altering operation, that will forever take her feelings away. But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena meets enigmatic Alex, a boy from the Wilds who lives under the government's radar. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?

All that being said, this is a fantastic series beginner. It's just one of those beginners that's good for its potential, not for its actual content. Pandemonium and Requiem are, again, not bad. They're just not great. Pandemonium is a gritty and a fun ride, with a good character arc for Lena. I know many reviewers hate Requiem's ending, but I thought the open ending fit. But this novel still didn’t work for me. Delir­ium, unfor­tu­nately, failed for me. Which is sad­den­ing, because Lau­ren Oliver is a good author and I know, with Delir­ium, she was reach­ing out and try­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent. I just wish it had been more successful. The intermediate books were compiled into one book, Delirium Stories subtitled Hana, Annabel, and Raven, released the same date. Alex, also between the first and second books, was released with the first edition of the final book in the trilogy, Requiem.Her novels for middle grade readers include The Spindlers, Liesl & Po, and the Curiosity House series, co-written with H. C. Chester. She has written one novel for adults, Rooms. The most flagrant one was the time left until Lena's cure which skips all around. When it's down to just seventeen days, her aunt says it's several weeks away. Seventeen days is two and a half weeks, not several. Small things, I know, but it interrupted the flow of a story which was already dragging and not flowing well. And last it is not as exciting as the Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld, which offers a setting that does not differ so much from „Delirium“: Authorities dealt with the human faults that led to a global catastrophe by turning everybody over 15 into pretty, rather dumb and peaceful people, who mind their jobs, meet their kids now and then and are content with partying and working. Like Lena Tally looks forward to her transformation - in her case from ugly to pretty - , to her move into the pretties’ dormitory ... until her best friend starts to install doubts into her mind. And ... whoosh ... the reader is drawn into a breathless thrill-ride that lasts three volumes and makes countless unexpected turns. When I started rereading this, I was surprised by the fact that there was so much I have forgotten about its story. It was as if my brain blotted out all the exciting details so I could fully enjoy it again. The truth is I have enjoyed it more this time. Lauren Oliver's powerful New York Times bestselling novel Delirium—the first in a dystopian trilogy—presents a world as terrifying as George Orwell's 1984 and a romance as true as Romeo & Juliet.