Requiem (Delirium Trilogy, 3)

Read this and other reviews at [...] *Disclaimer: this is NOT my best review, not even close.* I find it hard to review books/series that are this amazing. The story speaks for itself and no words I say will serve any real justice to the story. Just know, the words, the characters and the storyline, they moved me. This is a fantastic series. {{This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.}} This was one of my most highly anticipated releases for 2013, and it did not disappoint. That being said, it wasn't the best in the series, but it was amazing, nonetheless. Lauren Oliver's ability to craft words never ceases to amaze me. She's really almost in a league of her own, when it comes to the lyrical nature of her writing. It's insane how well she can weave a story and suck you in. Even though Requiem wasn't my favorite book in the Delirium series, it still blows most other books out of the water. {{Direction, like time, is a general thing, deprived of boundaries and borders. It is an endless process of interpretation and reinterpretation, doubling back and adjusting.}} Requiem picks up basically where Pandemonium ends, which if you've read Pandemonium, you know there was quite the revelation at the end. Very shocking. And exciting. But left a lot of questions. I am going to be incredibly brief on the overall plot, because well, I hate spoilers, as you already know, and really, I think this, as the others in the series, should be read blindly. I didn't read teasers, excerpts, or any other reviews or quotes before going into this. I wanted it all fresh in my brain. {{"You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?"}} There were so many changes taking place in The Wilds. The Resistance refused to be stomped out, but The Cureds weren't going down without a fight either. {{We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.}} This book, unlike the others, is told from dual POVs. Half of the story is from Lena, and the other half is from Hana. I thought this was great because it gave us a chance to experience life on both sides of the fence/wall. We saw what was happening in The Wilds because of Lena, but we also got the chance to see life from a Cured point of view. {{I like seeing the Wilds this way: skinny, naked, not yet clothed in spring. But reaching, too, grasping and growing, full of want and a thirst for sun that gets slaked a little bit more every day. Soon the Wilds will explode, drunk and vibrant.}} While there weren't necessarily many unexpected plot twists in the story, there were lots of heart-stopping moments. A lot of them I can't touch on without giving away vital parts of the story, so unfortunately, I have to be super vague. I think most readers' issue with this story was the realism to it. For that, I applaud Ms. Oliver. I think she wrote what truly should have happened, even though, at times, it wasn't easy to read. {{"And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me."}} When I read the end, I cried. I had goose bumps, and tears were streaming down my face. It's not that the ending was necessarily sad. I guess, for me, it was sad knowing it was the end of an amazing series, but more than that, I cried because it was just so awesome. I will say, in retrospect, I do think the end felt a touch rushed, but even so, while there was enough resolution, there's still plenty left to your imagination. There was nothing overly tidy about the ending. It just was. And it worked. And was so beautiful. {{He who jumps may fall, but he may also fly. It's time to jump.}} I am looking forward to reading the rest of the short stories in this series; so far, I've only read Hana, which totally threw me for a loop. I also cannot wait to see what Lauren writes next. She's up there as one of my favorite authors, and I will, no doubt, be waiting on pins and needles for her next release. I cannot recommend this series enough. I wasn't ever into dystopian fiction before, but this is so, so much more than that. THIS QUOTE RIGHT HERE! Among the others I included, just shows how AMAZING Lauren is with words. If this doesn't perfectly sum up life, I don't know what does. This gives me the chills when I read it, but it also gives me this sense of hope. I need to read it every single day. {{But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to all along.}}

With the freedom of free will and the ability to love comes the consequence of loss, grief and pain. But for many, the freedoms are worth the consequences. In Lauren Oliver's final installment of the Delirium series, Requiem, we find out just how far the resistance will go to stop a world only interested in keeping its citizens numb and uncaring. Lena Having saved Julian and reuniting with Alex, Lena now bears a heavy cross. Alex has been cured, which has left him a different person- closed off, reserved, and disconnected from everything he shared with Lena. With Alex so different, Lena is drawn closer to Julian, but even Julian knows she still loves the old Alex. Even if the old Alex is gone. But boys aside, the people in the Wilds are no longer safe. They used to be protected by the fact that the government didn't want to acknowledge their existence, but since their very public demonstrations, that is no longer possible. Now they are hunting down everyone in the Wilds with one purpose: total extinction for all uncured people. But the uncured must decide their path. Do they fight back, or do they run? The decision will change Lena's life forever. Hana Hana was cured, but it didn't take. She is still haunted by dreams and emotions she shouldn't have to worry about. But her pair has been made and she is to marry the new mayor. She should be happy about the favorable match, but all she can think about is Lena. Where is she? What happened to her? When rumors of rebels get around, Hana begins to see Fred's true colors. Determined to stamp out all rebellion, Fred clearly aspires to be a true dictator. But with the population scared of the rebels, they look to Fred to protect them, even if it means they will lose more and more of their freedoms. Again, I loved having two different perspectives to the story. With Oliver's previous novels, we have seen this alternating perspective, which she does particularly well. It really allows you to see both sides of the wall (pun intended) and doesn't bias the story. When you watch the rebels doing what rebels do best- fighting back- you realize this isn't the best situation for everyone. But still, there is no doubt what a monster Fred is. I always like Hana, so I was really happy to see more of her in this story. But Fred was the prize for me in terms of characters. He was the kind of man you LOVE to hate, which kept me coming back to see where his storyline went. My biggest issue with this novel is that it is supposed to be a conclusion where everything is laid on the table. And it was certainly shaping up to be just that, but something got lost at the very end. Instead of a complete and satisfying conclusion, it felt rushed and empty. I wanted more. In fact, it ended like a typical chapter conclusion, not the end of a trilogy. I actually kept reading expected more only to realize that was the acknowledgments section. Where did the end of the book go? I am sad this didn't end in the best way for me because otherwise, I really loved this series. It was well written and read easily. But Oliver does like to put out those short stories, so maybe she will release something for after Requiem. It's just too bad she didn't put it all in the book.

Title: Requiem Author: Lauren Oliver Rating: 5 Stars My Review - This has SPOILERS! It's book three in a trilogy, peeps... For me, this was the perfect ending. What's funny is at first I was like, "I called it. This is really about Hana and her mother more than it is about boys." *pats self on back*. But no, as always, Oliver is more layered than that. Somehow she took an essentially fantasy story (Dystopian, I know. But still fantastical) and injected it with a huge dose of real. It was real that Alex tried to let Lena move on, and that she tried as well, and that Julian will suffer in the end because they couldn't. Messy? Yes. But real. Real people do these sorts of things: lie to themselves, take what they can get, hide... On the surface people might call this a love triangle, but I find that to be an over-used term, applied to any situation in which there might be more than one love interest for a major character. In this case, Lena really only loved Alex. She took comfort in Julian's love for her, but her love for Alex never wavered. Another dose of real? The fact that Lena and her mother, now "Bee," didn't just fall into each other's arms and make up. After so long and so many scars, how could they? The same thing is true with Hana. Oliver really twists your heart with the knowledge that Halena is gone forever. That pretty moment of love, the innocent, share everything including gum, lie on your back and watch the clouds, "I promise we'll be best friends forever kind of love," is gone. How often are the Halenas lost forever? How many of us set aside our childish things in favor of what is expected, acceptable, and predictable. How much do we "cure" ourselves, stripping away the things we love until there is nothing left but data: your favorite color, favorite meal, hobbies... In this story there is real love, the kind that slips and slides and refuses to just sit down and stay put where we want it. It was critical that Oliver show you real love in this story, seeing as its extremes (the agony and the ecstasy, if you will) make up the critical commentary. Is one worth the other? Does one give the other *more* value than it would otherwise have? "You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?" THAT is the core of this story, the heartbeat, and it's a question we ask ourselves every day. And so I am struck, finally, by the dragnet of this story...not the surface of dystopia and cures and subterfuge, but the deeper hooks, the ones that dig into you and drag, bleeding your answers from the wounds. No. I don't believe you can ever truly be happy if you're never unhappy. Is that such a strange concept? I think we all agree on this, and yet, and yet, we seek heaven on Earth at every turn and curse our ill fortunes rather than feeling the balance of it all. That's the way of it, I guess. I rail at the injustices along with everyone else. I can understand wanting a cure... She's got me thinking, as usual. Back to the story... I LOVE Alex. That doesn't mean that I don't love Julian. Julian is lovely and delightful and one day he'll find love again; something that those of us that are older come to accept...even though that is a little tragic, too, in a way. But I LOVE LOVE Alex. He's exactly the right match for Lena, in the end. And it was inevitable that they would find their way back to one another, in the end. I was glad that Oliver gave us that. She had, had, had to give us that. The Crew. Raven and Tack, mostly, but also the others. I loved the little crew that Lena found and helped in the Resistance. It was all caprice that she was found by them in the first place in Pandemonium, but she was loyal and she stuck with them through the end. I liked some of the new characters they came across, like Pippa. When Oliver wrote the end of Raven's story, it had to have hurt. Because it hurt me to read it. She'd been so important to Lena, the missing mother that she needed. Even though Raven was tough, she always understood when Lena was at her limits and gave her room. Her loss was a deep blow. The Retribution. I LOVED when Fred Hargrove went BOOM! Also delightful. It was amazing the way Oliver deftly traded out psychotic villians in each tome, with the young Fred Hargrove being introduced in this one as the most nefarious of the lot. You get the idea that he's probably the kind of guy that has no problem hitting a woman *real* quick, but the extra layer of torturing animals and the Bluebeard story suggests full Dahmer-like sickness. You're very, very happy when Fred Hargrove goes BOOM. Hana. Given that her POV was half the story, you'd think I would have talked about her sooner. But it's easier to talk about Hana's loss than it is to talk about Hana herself. When I saw that Oliver chose to write from the POV of one of the cured, I was surprised. It was a great idea, but also so challenging. How do you write from the POV of someone with no feelings? I have to say it was extremely well done, and even though Hana's cure wasn't "perfect" because she still felt pangs and had dreams and memories, you could tell it was dulled. In fact, even though she is somewhat "released," her story makes it clear that the cured will never be free. They will always be dulled, cut off from the others and their feelings. It's tragic. The walls will come down and the uncured will go back to being the messy, unpredictable, hit-or-miss creatures that they are, but the zombies will never be the same. They will not care for their children, or spouses, or selves ever again. So was it a happy ending? Yesish. That will have to do. Was it satisfying? Extremely. Have I given up thumping Oliver for not making it more sci-fi detailed for me? Yes. I loved it. Go get it. One of the best dystopian trilogies, bar none. BTW - Oodles of people wanted more at the end. I understand that feeling. I did too. I wanted to see Lena and Alex happy together and have a big, pretty bow...but I didn't feel it. The ending works for me.

Requiem by Lauren Oliver is the third book in the Delirium trilogy. I gobble up all things YA and loved the first two books in the series, so was a happy camper when this book finally came out and downloaded onto my Kindle! Let me just say, Lauren Oliver is a great writer. There is a lot of YA fiction out there that is poorly written and none of Oliver's books fall into that category. Requiem is well-written and engaging. The dystopian United States that she paints is believable and the structures of this crumbled world stay the same throughout all three books. The first book, Delirium, totally sucks you in. The characters of Lena and Hana are the classic friend duo, breaking all the rules. When Alex comes into the picture, you root for him and Lena to get together and for the teens to break free of society's mandatory "cure." The cure that wipes away the ability to love and keeps everyone in control. The second book, Pandemonium, follows Lena out into the Wilds and Alex to a special hell of a prison. This is where things start to falter a bit. The main characters that you really care about are too split up. Alex is apart from Lena, Lena is apart from Hana and her cousin Grace, and you meet a whole new group of characters in the Wilds, some of whom are immediately killed off. And then enters Julian, the son of the total bad-guy-in-charge, as well as Lena's mother who has been assumed dead. What I, as the reader, wanted out of Requiem was answers and a good wrap up to the stories of all the main characters. The problem is that Oliver has too many threads going and she started a whole new point of view by rolling back to Hana from the first book. I felt like I had lost the character of Alex, he had been gone too long from the story, and so when there was the love triangle between Lena, Alex, and Julian, it felt forced. Especially with the introduction of Alex's new love interest in the Wilds. Then you meet Pippa, the counterpart to Raven, all the while circling back to the supposedly cured Hana, her impending wedding to the new evil mayor, and her connection to Grace, Lena's outcast cousin. Oh yeah, and the whole Lena and her distant mom drama. You sort of lose the story of the fight between the cured and uncured because Oliver tries to go too deep into too many characters. When you have a trilogy, you want to make sure that the main characters are really well developed, their story lines are strong, their voices are well defined, and their actions are at the forefront. Then you can add in a bunch of lesser characters. In addition, you don't really get an end to the whole story. Lena herself says, "I don't know what will happen - to me, to Alex and to Julian, to any of us." It's implied that the uncureds will succeed in taking down society, but have little idea how to build it back up. It's also implied that Alex and Lena will get back together, but the reader gets no definite answers. So my conclusion is this: The whole series is entertaining, well-written, and if you love YA, you will enjoy it. Despite Requiem's drawbacks and lack of a concrete conclusion, it does manage to semi-wrap up the story and leave the reader basically satisfied. Compared to a lot of other trilogies out there, this is one of the better ones.

****Spoiler Alert: Requiem is the third book in a trilogy. Read this review only if you've read Delirium and Pandemonium**** This one has to start with a few notes. First, I love-love-love Lauren Oliver and the Delirium trilogy. This was one of those event books I was counting down to and planning ahead to drop everything for. Second, I'm aware that it's damn near impossible for there to be a perfect ending to a lead-up as intense as this series. I accept that. That said, let us proceed to this crazy fangirl's best attempt at fairness. The Basics: Lena and the other rebels who've escaped the procedure to cure them of amor deliria nervosa (love) are no longer being ignored by the authorities in the regulated cities. The Wilds where they've taken refuge are under attack, and Lena is forced to fight back in a full-scale resistance alongside both Julian, the boy she's just rescued from the cure in Pandemonium, and Alex, the first love she'd assumed dead after he was shot while rescuing her from the cure in Delirium. Meanwhile, in regulated territory, Lena's former best friend, Hana, is coming to realize that her own cure may not have been entirely successful, and that her assigned fiancé, the soon-to-be mayor of Portland, is still a dangerous psychopath in spite of his. The Downside: With Lena spending almost the entire book in the emotionally unregulated Wilds and Hana's storyline limited almost completely to people who can't be completely cured, the very powerful basic concept of the trilogy doesn't get to shine as much as in the previous two books. The moments when ordinary love is made breathtakingly special by its contrast with a total absence of love are present but fewer and farther between, making it feel more like any other dystopian rebel epic. The body count demanded by such an epic also means there are a lot of background characters who aren't quite worth getting to know. I won't spoil which shippers come away triumphant (or whether I was one of them), but I will say that, after a full book's absence, and with the scarce and mostly negative showing Alex gets (he's got some issues to work out after escaping from the Crypts), he's a lot harder to root for than he probably should be. The Upside: It's Lauren-freaking-Oliver. It's some gutsy, cutting, and seriously poetic prose. The bloody dystopian rebel epic storyline may not be as innovative as the original Delirium concept, but it's still a fantastic bloody dystopian rebel epic, and like everything Oliver does, she makes it fresh. Even without the ever-present feeling-free backdrop that threw the drama of the first two books into such sharp relief, she can still cut through the numbness of a jaded reader. She still unfailingly makes me cry and cringe and cower at all the right moments as only the power of a good book can. Those throwaway background characters actually do add to the surrounded-by-death feel of the rebels' world in a way extras' deaths seldom do, partly because it's very clear that their deaths do not mean that the main characters are safe. No one is. Nothing is. The first two books set a clear enough precedent that no horrifying detail of this universe will be glossed over or sanitized when it arises, but Requiem really pulls all that lurking horror into the light, pushes it as far as it can go, then pushes farther, without it ever reaching the relief of the cartoonish too-far. The parallel storylines of Lena surviving in the impoverished and violent Wilds and Hana fearing for her life and her conscience in her fiancé's pristine mansion offers a similar, if not quite as dramatic, contrast to the one the cure created in the first two books, with the added explosive tension of waiting for their two lives to collide again. The bonus short story included in Requiem's first printing, while not essential to the overall story, is definitely worth getting your hands on. As well as being a gut punch in its own right, it offers the sympathy for Alex that's hard to come by in the novel itself. In fact, I might recommend reading the short story first for that reason. The end is... open-ended. Tidy conclusion to the epic it's not, but it works with the spirit of the story. A world where love exists is untidy and unpredictable and uncontrollable, but it's better than the alternative. That's kind of the point.

Writing this review means that I have to give this book a rating. I've been torn about it since I finished it a day ago and I knew it was somewhere between a 3 and a 5-star review but there were SO MANY THINGS I FELT. I ended up just going for four stars because I didn't know what else to do, to be honest. There were a lot of things said before this came out by a lot of people I trust but I ignored them mostly because, when other people have strong feelings about things, I don't necessarily feel the same way. In fact, I usually don't feel the same way at all. Either way, I think I liked it more than most but I was a little disappointed for personal reasons and less about the story itself. It was nice, but not what I wanted. So let's start off with what's good about the book. Hana's back! Similar to how Pandemonium is split up, Requiem jumps between Lena and Hana's points of view. At first I was nervous because I haven't read any of Oliver's novellas so I wasn't sure I would be able to follow/enjoy Hana's point of view, but I did! Hana is still in Portland so we get to see things from the inside even though Lena is fully removed from society now. And Hana has been cured, but it hasn't necessarily been working how it was supposed to -- she remembers Lena and her family, misses running and has all kinds of crazy dreams. I don't want to spoil anything too much but obviously Lena and her posse don't sit on their laurels after regrouping outside of New York. They trek through a bunch of different places, trying to help the Resistance in any way they can. There are some great scenes where Lena has to make some tough decisions regarding various things -- life and love included. It's not an easy trip for anyone involved, but it's an interesting read. I'm trying so hard not to spoil A SINGLE THING for anyone but there's so much stuff that happens and it's all so good. It really is. So it's really good until the last ten pages. The worst part? You don't know even know they're the last ten pages either, because the tricky people at Harper Collins included an excerpt of Before I Fall at the end so you think there's more left in the book than there actually is! I think that's what threw me more than anything else. Had I known that I was approaching the end, I might have been better prepared for everything. But I wasn't! I was expecting 30 more pages or so and I got ten! And I liked about seven of the ten. The ones that I didn't like were a strange Hana chapter that didn't make sense to me. The chapter before that featuring her, would've been a good ending point for Hana but Lauren Oliver added on this strange chapter that made Hana seem crazy. At least to me. The other pages that I didn't mind were just completely open-ended. I can understand Oliver's need to leave it like that -- I'm fairly certain I would end my own story that way -- but at the same time, I selfishly wanted some resolution. There wasn't any resolution with the characters or the plot. There sort of was for a few, but not fully, which didn't really help the situation. So 95% of the novel was fabulous and I was giddy as a school girl reading it. But the end just brought me down. If you're prepared, I think you might not have such a hard time as I had, but maybe you're just a selfish as me and you will.

So, I regretfully rushed through another book. My biggest downfall with reading: I can't get enough, but I want it to last forever. I finished REQUIEM, Lauren Oliver's final installment of the Delirium Trilogy. It definitely had me eager to turn the page (so much so that when I was done, my response was "Whaaaaat?! ALREADY?! Nooooo!") My problem always is that I find a book, realize it's a series, have a party (by myself), read all the books in about 2.5 seconds, and mourn the loss of an amazing book series for about a month, and repeat. With REQUIEM it was no different. Oliver has one of the best writing styles I've seen -- she can define the voice of her narrator very well. This is especially true in REQUIEM with the alternating POVs. She draws you in, gets you to love (most) of her characters, and then pulls it all away from you. You're left to sit in a corner and cry by yourself because this realm that you've put your mind and body in for three whole books has ended and now what are you supposed to do? Anyway, for those of you who haven't read the Delirium Trilogy yet, you really have to. It's along the lines of The Hunger Games and Divergent, but with one of the most compelling stories (especially if you're a teenage girl). In this dystopian society Oliver has laid out for us, love is an infectious disease which must be vanquished from society, referred to as amor deliria nervosa. The story centers around Lena, a girl nearing her "cure date," where she will be injected with the cure for love, and essentially devoid of all feelings and attachments. But then she meets Alex, a boy, of course... and she realizes just how amazing love can be. While it sounds cheesy, or typical, or boring (I've heard all of these ridiculous generalizations), Delirium is none of these. The story is a compelling, heartfelt, page-turning adventure that literally left me in tears at the end of book one. Now having finished the third and final installment, I really don't know what I could/should do with myself. The ending is something that most people (so I've heard) dislike. While I initially had this reaction, due to its gut-wrenchingly open-ended, leaving-me-wanting-more ending, I came to realize just how important and profound the ending is. Lauren Oliver is able to sum up the entire meaning of the story in the last few paragraphs better than most writers hardly manage in an entire book (or series, in some cases). I don't really want to give too much away, because 1) I hate spoiling endings for people, just as much as I hate having endings spoiled for me, 2) I want people to figure out their own interpretation and thoughts about the ending, 3) Yes, there is a love triangle, and yes she does more or less "end up" with someone and I don't want to reveal who. So, please. Do yourself a favor. Read this book. Read all of these books. Even if you've never read a YA book before, or a dystopian book before. Even if you've never read before. Take your time. Breathe it in. Live it. Because once it's over, it will probably be one of the worst days of your life. I almost guarantee it.

Oh wow, this week I listened to the last book in Lauren Oliver's Delirium series and when it was over I was surprisingly ok with the way things were wrapped up. This book was one of the most talked about books online and on twitter. I know I was one of those eagerly chomping at the bit, or book in this case, to get my hands on it. I loved the first book when I listened to it two years ago. I love distopian novels and the very idea of one where love is a disease, How they cured the delirium caused by love was intriguing. How do I write more about what I love about this book, or this series, without giving away spoilers? I don't think I can, so if you don't want to know anything or haven't read any of the books in the series then stop here and read no further. Requiem picks up right at the end of where Pandemonium left off with Alex not being dead, but alive, and he is hurting because he thinks Lena has moved on with Julian. There was one scene in the book that almost broke my heart because I am team Alex and that is when Lena is able to finally get Alex alone and they have a horrible fight. Words are spoken and hearts, including mine, were bruised if not broken. The roller coaster ride of emotions were at an all time high. I think this scene and the fact that Lena and Hannah were both narrating is what really brings the other side of the delirium issue home and as a reader I can connect with "the zombies" as well. In the first book we see Lena fall in love and then lose that love in such a tragic way. But we see her pick up the pieces and try to get on their is hope in the second book. In the second book she has to protect herself because she is filled with grief and guilt. There is hope, but then Alex comes back and her mom is alive and we think everything will be ok, but it's not because there is hurt and anger then people change and move on. That is what I like about Lauren Oliver's writing, it is real and they don't call right into each others arms because it is always the people you love the most that you hurt the most. For Hannah, Lena's best friend we find out that through her own jealousness she was the one that gave Lena and Alex's location away and has always felt guilty about that. She has now had the procedure and is cured. I think I can sympathize with that side as well, because while people should have the right to choose love, I can see how not feeling, not caring, would seem like the answer too. Hannah's procedure doesn't work exactly like it's supposed to because when you love and betray that love, these feelings become a part of your soul and are not easily wiped away. Even in our own society where terrorists can cause the death of thousands I can see the appeal of building barriers and trying to find cures against that kind of passion. Faith and love can make people do crazy things. That is what I loved about this book, that Lauren Oliver explored both sides of the issue in a beautiful and poetic way. I felt that while the ending seem lacking to some, I felt it was full of hope. I felt like both sides, the diseased and the cured, were not wrong. The issue is about choice and cutting yourself off and living life to the fullest. And as the book says, knock down those walls and those barriers even if it is just one person at a time. Everyone has the right to love or not to love. The audiobook is narrated by Sarah Drew and she voiced all three books in the series. Sarah is an actress and has been on shows like Grey's Anatomy. I think she does a fantastic job as the narrator. She really made the book come alive for me. Her narration of the Alex and Lena scene really gave that dramatic impact that just pushed into heart breaking for me. I could really see those two characters in the woods yelling at each other and the tears streaming down Lena's face because Ms. Drew sounded like she was crying as she voiced a sobbing Lena. I highly recommend not only reading Requiem, but listening to it as well because their is nothing that really brings a book alive like a narrator who loves the story they are voice acting as much as the obsessed fans, like me. I give Requiem the audiobook five laser pistols because it really is a supernova.