Delirium, the first book in the trilogy, sets the scene by introducing Lena, a fairly typical girl in all aspects except that both her parents died when she was young, leaving her to live with her aunt and uncle. Lena follows the rules that the government has set up to protect young people from the disease of love - like everyone else she's terrified of it. But before she gets the Cure, she falls in love with Alex. Alex is secretly spying on the government because he is an Invalid, one of the uncured rebels who are forced to live in the Wilds, the unexplored territory beyond the walls that protect the cities. Alex is also part of a rebellion against the government, because the Invalids believe everyone should be free to love. Lena realizes that once she has the Cure, what she feels for Alex will be gone and she will be paired with a suitable young man for the rest of her life. To escape that fate, she and Alex try and escape together to the Wilds, but they are caught, and Lena sees Alex go down after making sure she will get away safely.I found Delirium to be a fairly decent book - not particularly slow moving or boring. I wasn't sure I liked the way the story was going, but the idea of love being a disease was new and fairly interesting, so I decided to read on. Delirium is probably worthy of 3.5 stars from me.
The second book, Pandemonium, takes off and continues the story with an alternating timeline. Each chapter alternates between Lena's mission within Portland, spying for the Invalids, and her recent struggle to adjust to life in the Wilds. This tactic allows Lena's growth as a character to be gradually revealed from a variety of aspects - a writing strategy that I liked. While Lena recovers from her flight from Portland in the Wilds, she goes from being a heartbroken girl to someone who is stronger, more determined, hiding her love for Alex under a tough exterior. At the same time as this aspect of Lena's life is revealed, her mission within Portland also continues, and she ends up saving the life of a boy called Julian, one who strongly supports the Cure. During her attempt to keep him alive and escape from detection, she and Julian also fall in love.Pandemonium seemed to me to be a decent story in some ways, and a terrible one in others. I admired Lena's recovery and her determination to do something about the Cure now that she knew it was evil. But at the same time as I was admiring that, I was hating her romance with Julian. I felt it was too sudden and not founded upon anything. To me it seemed like a reaction to a very stressful and dangerous situation, but not built on a real and lasting affection for each other as something other than friends. The romance seemed like a plot device meant to cause Lena further anguish more than anything else. Largely because of this, Pandemonium was only worth 3 stars.
Requiem I approached with the hope that Oliver would turn the story around and make it come out satisfactory. Lena, Julian, and Alex (who did not die at the end of Delirium - surprise!) are working with the rest of the Invalids to make the rebellion a reality, but as the days go by, the futility of their actions seems more and more obvious. Lena is also trying to decide which she loves best: Julian or Alex. I found this particularly agonizing, since it took the entire book for her to make up her mind and she was constantly dwelling on it. Thankfully, Lena's chapters were alternated with chapters narrated by her childhood friend, Hana. Since Lena left Portland, Hana has had the Cure and is about to be married to her match, a wealthy and influential young man who is important to the fight against the Invalids. Hana's chapters provided me with some relief from Lena's brooding, and I found Hana's side of the story to be intriguing. The ending of Requiem wasn't particularly thorough - it left all the major questions answered, but although the government had been overthrown, Oliver only hints at what the future holds for Lena, Julian, Alex, Hana, and the rest. I was somewhat dissatisfied with this way of ending the story, but I think that winding up all that had happened would have taken too long to do well, and would have ended up boring. Still, Requiem didn't meet up to my expectations, and I would only rate it 3 stars.
I happen to have reasons for my less-than-favorable opinion of the Delirium trilogy. First, the love triangle between Lena, Julian, and Alex was a disappointment to me. Stripped of most of the details, the love story went like this: The girl falls in love with a boy who represents something she's been afraid of all her life, but when they run away from everything she's ever known to be together, he 'dies'. She's heartbroken and becomes a very toughened character, but then falls in love with a boy who's the complete opposite - and just when everything seems to be working out between them, the first boy shows up again. Now the girl has to choose between two boys she loves and who still love her.
I generally don't like love triangles, and although I liked a few things about both boys, neither of them really impressed me. Put those two things together, and the combination was not appealing. The other thing which I disliked about the Delirium trilogy was that Oliver used swear words frequently - and not little ones either. That really disappointed me, because beyond that she has a very beautiful style that makes for really good reading. The swearing definitely lowered my opinion of her. And the other thing that I wasn't happy with about the Delirium trilogy is that it has many of the characteristics of a dystopian story, and I've never been fond of those.
However, there were good things about the story, or I wouldn't have kept reading past the first book. The characters were excellent, and although there were a few I personally did not enjoy, they were still well-written. Lena - though she had moments when she seemed weak - is a pretty scrappy character, and she doesn't give in when things get really bad. Alex and Julian made good partners for her in different ways, and I liked that Oliver at least made them different instead of having both love interests be nearly identical. I actually enjoyed Hana because she had more snap and fun to her in Delirium than Lena did, and in Requiem she wasn't as brooding as Lena was. The other Invalids that Lena meets were also good characters, particularly Raven and Tack, the two leaders of the Invalid band Lena joins up with in the Wilds.
Link to author website: http://laurenoliverbooks.com/
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