Requiem by Lauren Oliver Series: Delirium #3
Published by HarperCollins Children's Books on 5th March 2013
Genres: Dystopian
Pages: 400 (Paperback)
Source: Swap
Good Books • Amazon • Goodreads
They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past.
But we are still here.
And there are more of us every day.
Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has been transformed. The nascent rebellion that was under way in Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight.
After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven—pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators now infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels, and as Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor.
Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings.
Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it.
But we have chosen a different road.
And in the end, that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose.
We are even free to choose the wrong thing.
Requiem is told from both Lena’s and Hana’s points of view. The two girls live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.
Requiem. When all good things must come to an end. A horrible, horrible end that didn’t do any justice to the series. But an end nonetheless. Requiem is like sitting down to a well-deserved, hot pie and relishing every bite until you get to the last one and die of poisoning without ever knowing why or how. There was literally a moment when I got to the last few pages, realized there wasn’t any more and freaked out. From enjoyment for insurmountable anger.
I am a solid believer that Lauren Oliver is a capable, talented author. I also think she’s brave. Not all authors risk venturing into unfamiliar territory. Think how common it is for an author to be writing their fourth or fifth book in a series and starting spinoffs in the same world when even that gets old. It’s clear from Delirium that Oliver was trying on something new. Uncomfortable at first, but I’d felt that in Pandemonium, she had hit her stride. Requiem, the last part of Lena’s journey, seems to have been a new challenge all in its own. One that I didn’t feel Oliver managed to surmount.
The novel is divvied up into Lena’s POV and Hannah’s POV – sometimes done with more success than other times. Overall, it wasn’t a bad series and Requiem wasn’t necessarily a bad book. It simply could never escape from the premise holding so much more promise than the story could deliver. Compared to other series in this genre, it struggled to hold its own candle. I feel bereft and let down after the promise and goodness that was Pandemonium.
There are concepts and ideas there. A tale Oliver wants to tell about love – its strengths and pitfalls. The good and the bad. You can see the reaching for it in Requiem. Then a point comes when it seems the tale is abandoned in favour of wrapping it up as soon as possible. Some might call it an open ending. To me an open ending leaves you with thoughtful questions, not a whole lot of blank spaces. To me, Requiem doesn’t have an open ending. It just stops, with little rhyme or reason.
I’m not even going to talk about anything else that happens or the characters or themes or writing or anything. I refuse. Debate or not, an ending is an ending is an ending. Just because something ended doesn’t mean you gave it an actual ending. Need further proof? Allow me to illuminate on th-
Kat Kennedy
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