Book Review: REQUIEM by Lauren Oliver

Book Review:  Requiem

Author:  Lauren Oliver

Publisher:  HarperCollins

Category:  Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

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.  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.

DESCRIPTION VIA GOODREADS:

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.

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

********SPOILER ALERT********SPOILER ALERT********

Alex is alive. 
Lena's dream and nightmare has come true.  Alex lives but he is no longer the Alex that she knew and loved.  He is cold and filled with hate.....hate that is directed towards her.  

Despite all this, Lena knows that she still loves Alex. She never stopped.  And though she already has Julian who sacrificed his old life and joined the resistance for her, She cannot deny her true feelings.

Lena and her fellow Invalids keep moving.  They are no longer safe in the wilds.  The regulators, who now acknowledge that they exist, are on the hunt and the uncureds are the prey.

The beginning of it all

Lena's best friend Hana is cured and has been paired with the greatest catch in Portland's safe world, Fred Hargrove, its soon to be mayor.  But something is wrong.  Hana still feels and dreams what she is not supposed to.  Lena and the people Lena loved still matter to her, guilt for what she has done to Lena and Alex still eat at her and she feels the need to help Grace, Lena's favorite cousin whom she accidentally found in the bad part of town. And though Fred seems perfect, Hana knows there is more to him than he shows.  She finds out that Fred used to be married to someone else, but his wife later just disappeared.  If she resists Fred's controlling nature, will the same thing happen to her?

This book is the end of Lena and Hana's journey.  Told in both their perspectives, it is interesting how they transform into the people they become, especially Hana.  

As one of the cureds, Hana is an anomaly.  She cares. Too much.  And gets in trouble because of it.  The old feisty Hana still exists within the new one and though her feelings have been essentially numbed, she stills feels.  Hers is my favorite character in this last installment of the series.  She evolves in spite of the cure, and I like how she becomes the linchpin between the good and bad at the end.  She is the answer to Lena's future, despite being its destroyer in the past.

As for Lena, she has gotten strong.  She no longer runs away and is now like her mother, a brave member of the resistance.
Lena's only flaw is her love for Alex. Heck even I was torn between Alex and Julian.  Both sacrifice so much for her love but in the end she can only choose one.

Lauren Oliver created an interesting dystopian world that we delve into again in Requiem.
But my patience was stretched through much of the book, with its many descriptions and overlong scenes. 

Honestly I was disheartened with the lack of Julian and Alex.  One of the things that attached me to the series to begin with were these two men and I was looking forward to reading thrilling scenes with those two plus Lena.  Instead the love triangle just fell away and much of the book is about escaping, then fighting for their right to exist.  Both Alex and Julian were built up so much in the two previous books that this just left me with...... nothing.
So if you're a Julian or an Alex fan, lower your expectations... perhaps then you may still enjoy Requiem.

You may visit the Author's site at:

http://www.laurenoliverbooks.com/

Here are my reviews of DELIRIUM and PANDEMONIUM:

http://readingtsinoy.blogspot.com/2012/03/book-review-delirium-by-lauren-oliver.html

http://readingtsinoy.blogspot.com/2012/03/book-review-pandemonium-by-lauren.html