Delirium

This is the first book I have read since I starting doing reviews that I didn't care for. I'm actually a little excited - I get to rant!

I just finished Delirium by Lauren Oliver. I had not really heard much about this book - but I had heard a lot about Oliver. Her debut book Before I Fall is supposed to be incredible. But it isn't sci-fi-y at all, so I opted for her dystopian trilogy. I think I chose wrong.

(Spoilers!)

This is the story of Lena. She lives in a not too distant future where the government has decided that love is a disease and needs to be eradicated. When kids are 18 they are evaluated, then matched with a partner, then they undergo a brain surgery to "cure" them from love. Then they go through life blissfully happy.

Lena can't wait for the cure - her mom had undergone the cure 3 times and it hadn't worked. She ended up killing herself instead of going through the procedure again. Lena's friend - Hana - has discovered some on-line friends who party and listen to the wrong music and hang out with the opposite sex. Lena meets Alex - who she thinks is cured - and starts to have feelings for him. She finds out that he is not cured - he is actually from the Wilds beyond the fences around the city. They fall in love - and Alex has discovered through his visiting the prison that Lena's mother may be alive.

They sneak in to see her only to find out she escaped. Lena feels betrayed by everyone and decides to run off with Alex into the Wilds. They are discovered before they can go - and Lena's cure is moved up. She manages to escape - Alex arrives on a motorcycle just in time - and Lena makes it over the fence. Alex doesn't. Lena is running through the Wilds injured. The end.

I have several issue with this book. First - the pace is SLOW! So freaking SLOW! Lena discovers she likes music. That takes up like a chapter. Lena and Hana fight. That takes 3. The end is pretty exciting - but it takes over 400 pages to get there - and when I got there - it felt forced. They are careening around on a motorcycle - driving through blockades of armed guards like they are in the Fast and the Furious or some shit. It seemed a little much.

Then - this cure happened about 60 years ago. 60 years does not seem long enough to have gotten the entire population under control and for no one to remember that love didn't kill people. I just don't buy that the entire USA is behind fences, happy, submitting to brain surgery without a care in the world. Nope.

I also got really tired of hearing about how "ordinary" Lena is. She doesn't think she is pretty. She isn't tall - she isn't that smart. She can run - but that is it. I just hate how in ALL of these YA stories - its a girl who isn't the most gorgeous - but the gorgeous perfect boy loves her anyway. I know that they do it so the 16 year old normal girl reading the story thinks "Ohemgee! This could totes be me!" but it doesn't work that way. Way to sell books, though.

Finally - and this is the worst - but I know Oliver is a beautiful writer - but holy balls - she is so wordy. Girlfriend loves a simile. Every feeling was felt as though it was the first time she had ever been mad, happy, sad, anything. I know as a teen you get mood swings - but damn.

Shit like this:

"The farmhouse and the old barn are positioned in a dip of land between two hills, a mini valley, like the buildings are sitting right in the middle of somebody's pursed lips."

Really - the building weren't just sitting in a valley? Now I have a weird image of monopoly houses sitting in my mouth.Or Lena describing being drunk as out of control or "the way my thoughts seemed to break apart like a mist in the sun." I understood at out of control - but thanks for the visual.

Then there was my favorite - when Lena and Alex are in the Wilds and he is reading poetry:

"I close my eyes and listen. The feeling I had before of being surrounded by warmth swells and crests inside of me like a wave. Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind."

And just a page later:

"He speaks on, words washing over me, the way that sun-light skips over the surface of water and filters into the depths below, lighting up the darkness. I keep my eyes closed. Amazingly, I can still see the stars: whole galaxies blooming from nothing - pink and purple suns, vast silver oceans, a thousand white moons."

Oh. Em. Motha. Effing. Gee.

Seriously?? She sees feels whole oceans and sees dancing ribbons AND whole galaxies from a poem? By the end of the damn book I had a headache from rolling my eyes so freaking hard at whatever feeling was slamming into Lena at the moment.

The pros for me were that it ended strong enough to hook me. I want to know what happens to Lena in the Wilds and if she ever finds her mom. I kind of hope that Alex is dead so I get away from the chick who sees stars all the time - but I know he isn't. I'm not that lucky. Bella Swan didn't die when I wanted her to, either.