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Kim

Peace. Love. Books.

Requiem - Lauren Oliver I really liked this book! Some reviewers I follow had less than stellar reactions to this final book of the trilogy. One even said not to bother reading it and just ask someone else to find out what happened in the ending. I'm glad I decided to still read this myself and form my own opinion about it.

The story picks up where Pandemonium left off. Remember the killer cliffhanger that was? Alex was alive! He now joins Raven's group and Lena is now conflicted with her feelings for him and for Julian. Alex has changed, and expectedly so. He was thrown in the Crypts to rot. He managed to escape and make his way to the other Invalids but only to find Lena, the love of his life, with Julian. But the story in Requiem has become bigger than their love triangle. It has become bigger than themselves. The government has now become more aggressive in the pursuit of resistors. The people who are moving in the Wilds and moving on to seek the "better life" are hungry and tired. Their resources are slowly dwindling down and the regulators have sought violence to push them further and further to the edge.

Lena has changed a lot too over the months. She sometimes questions if the freedom they want is worth all the death and violence. They were dirty, hungry and shelterless. She feels somewhat guilty for bringing Julian to this life, when he could have been living in comfort had he not left his previous life. But she moves forward and is determined that this is a cause worth fighting for.

We also get to look into the Cureds lives with the alternating chapters from Hana's POV. She's engaged to be married to Fred Hargrove, the new mayor of Portland and this allows her to be in a position to hear of government plans. Hana's now cured but she feels...unsettled, which led her to wonder if she might be defective. Instead of feeling peace and indifference, she is feeling all sorts of emotions. She feels guilt and remorse for her participation in the discovery of Alex and Lena. She feels jealousy. She still dreams. She feels pity. And most importantly, she still has the unquenchable thirst to KNOW. And so she asks questions, much to the disapproval and anger of her fiancé.

I know the readers who were disappointed in this book were mostly dissatisfied by how it ended. There was no clear closure. Some commented that it was if the author had felt lazy and just decided to drop the pen (or stop typing) and just left off where she did. She had reasons for cutting off the story and I understand why even though I desperately wanted a world where Alex and Lena can live happily ever after. But as I've said, the story has become bigger than them. When I first started reading Delirium I thought that the idea for this dystopian world was absolutely ludicrous. But Lauren Oliver was such an good writer and I was sucked right in. And now Lena and the others have started this revolution and the government wants to make it a war. I hardly think it's fair to cramp a bunch of important details in the ending of Requiem just to give us a resolution. If she attempted to do so, if might not be believable and we would've hated her more for it. How do you convert a dystopian world you created to one in the "right" order? What type of government will you have? Who will be the leaders? These things do not happen overnight and I'm not saying that I'm happy with the ending but I can say that I'm satisfied. Who knows? Ms. Oliver might write a bonus epilogue later on for the romance-starved like me. But right now I'm okay with it. It was still an exceptionally written book and this series will remain a favourite.