Characters / Delirium Series

Portland Residents

The main characters and their families.

Magdalena Haloway

The protagonist of the series, Lena is a completely ordinary girl. In a world ravaged by amor deliria nervosa, she can't wait until she turns eighteen and can be cured of the disease of love. But then, she meets a boy...

• Cool Big Sis: Lena is this to her younger cousin Grace.

• Deadpan Snarker: Sometimes, especially towards the end of the first novel, and she keeps the habit.
  Thinking about Brian, her fiance: "Has it ever occurred to you that you're allergic to life?"
  Tied up and being scolded by Rachel: "Sorry to inconvenience you."
• Heel Realization: When a party Hana and Lena are attending is brutally raided by the police, Lena is shocked into realizing that if their supposed "protectors" are this cruel, then many things she has been raised to believe might be wrong as well.
• I Am Not Pretty: Lena doesn’t have much confidence in her looks and privately believes that her best friend Hana is the pretty one.
• The Masquerade: Joins in in Pandemonium, getting her own fake scar and identity so she can live hidden inside the fence.
• Meaningful Name: Lena is short for Magdalena, a name which carries heavy connotations of sin, passion and spirituality - both in the novel's mythology and in real life. Lampshaded by Lena as she wonders what could have possessed her mother to choose such a loaded name.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: Lena recognizes her own symptoms straight out of the Book of Shh, but falls in love anyway with the first good-looking, nonrelated boy she has an actual conversation with. Somewhat justified since her strictly gender-segregated upbringing has left her completely unprepared for dealing with boys, and Alex is quite the catch.
• Took a Level in Badass: The Wilds will do that to a person. After being hardened for months, she pulls off things like breaking herself and Julian out of an underground prison using only their wits and a hidden knife.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Several over the course of the story, as her struggles harden her. She turns out okay in the end, though.

Hana Tate

A rich, attractive girl who is Lena's best friend. Despite being well off she is a bit of a rebel, and invites Lena to come along to parties that seem not entirely legal...

• Foil: Hana is Lena's opposite in almost every way - taller, wealthier, more stylish and more outspoken against the system. However, when Lena asks her to escape into the wild with her and Alex, Hana doesn't dare to leave her comfortable lifestyle. In the end, it turns out Lena is actually the braver of the two.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In the novella Hana, it's revealed that this is the reason that Hana sold out Alex and Lena.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the third book, once she realizes how evil her husband-to-be is.
• I Am Not Pretty: One chapter told from Hana’s point of view has her confess that she didn’t feel pretty compared to Lena.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch
• Rule-Abiding Rebel: Hana is the one that first introduces Lena to the illegal concerts and thinks differently, but in the end, she decides to go through with the surgery and doesn't accept Lena's offer to run away with her. Also, it is revealed in an online sequel that Hana is the one who revealed Lena and Alex's relationship to the authorities.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In the Hana novella, she takes about twenty levels in jerkass — which is pretty impressive, considering it happens at the same time as the first book. In Delirium, she's a no-nonsense, supportive, understanding friend who's happy to help Alex and Lena cover their tracks, and even helps Lena while Lena's tied down and under guard despite the risks. In Hana, she's an immature, jealous bitch who deliberately turns Alex and Lena in and almost gets them killed because of her own selfishness.

Alex

A boy whom Lena meets early in the story. Alex is kind, and handsome... and also, not entirely what he seems.

• First Love: For Lena.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Stays behind, allowing the guards to reach him, during his and Lena's escape to buy her time to get over the fence.
• Not Quite Dead: Shows up alive and... not quite well, in the very last chapter of Pandemonium.
• The Masquerade: He's a part of one; His procedural scar is fake.

The Resistance

The resistance that fights against the government and its mandatory "cure". It contains people masquerading as cureds in society, sabotaging from the inside, as well as wandering groups of "homesteaders", living in the Wilds outside the fences.

Raven

Raven is the leader of the first band of Invalids that Lena encounters, despite not being much older herself. Her group finds Lena at the beginning of Pandemonium and Raven nurses her back to health. Her group is a part of the homesteaders, a larger group of Invalids who try to live peacefully in the Wilds, and resides in a homestead near Portland.

• Big Damn Heroes: Gets a moment in Pandemonium after Lena runs off to save Julian. Just as the former realizes she's alone and unarmed in the middle of hostile territory, cue Raven and Tack barging in.
• Broken Bird
• Changed My Mind, Kid: She was prepared to let Julian die for the cause, and dismissed Lena's pleading to save him - but once Lena actually runs off to do that, Raven comes back for them both along with Tack.
• Cool Big Sis: She has a kind of big-sister role to some of her group, especially Blue and Sarah. Lena eventuallt comes to see her as some sort of combined sister-parent figure as well.
• Cynical Mentor: To Lena.
• Determinator: It's pretty much a requirement for living in the Wilds, but Raven gets special mention; She built up her life in the wilderness from scratch, while having to care for infant Blue, and later she goes through (among other things) having her home bombed, losing several family members, and losing her adopted daughter/little sister, and she keeps leading the homesteaders through it all, trying to appear brave for their sake.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Years in the Wilds have certainly hardened her, but that doesn't prevent her from believing in what's right.
• Meaningful Rename: Like most of the Wilds' residents, she took a new name upon escaping society.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Lena points out that her willingness to sacrifice Julian for the sake of sending a message and disrupting the DFA, justifying it with "sometimes sacrifices are needed for the greater good", is not far from what the government preaches. She gets better, coming to the rescue when Lena runs off to save Julian.
• Survival Mantra: She comes up with several for the group to repeat, including "the past is dead", and "listen to Raven".
• Team Mom: A tough, no-nonsense version.
• That Woman Is Dead: "The past is dead" is one of the mantras she, and the other homesteaders, cling to. When asked about her life before she came to the Wilds, it's all she says; She makes it clear to Lena in no uncertain terms that whatever they were before, whoverer they knew, whatever they did, is dust.

Tack

A pretty cynical guy who runs the homestead near Portland along with Raven.

• Big Damn Heroes: As mentioned above, he and Raven saves the day when Lena tries to save Julian with no plan whatsoever.
• Cynical Mentor: To Lena, and presumably to the rest of the group as well.

Sarah

Blue

A young, quiet girl in the Portland homestead.

• Innocent Blue Eyes: One of the first things Lena notices about her. They're fitting, as she is rather young and looks innocent.
• Killed Off for Real: She doesn't make it when the homesteaders move for the winter.
• Meaningful Name: Lena assumes she is named for her striking blue eyes, and Raven doesn't protest. Except she isn't - she was named Blue because that's the color she was when Raven found her as a baby, abandoned and freezing. It's also worth noting that she's one of the few homesteaders who never got a Meaningful Rename, as she never lived within the fences to begin with.

Hunter

• Non-Indicative Name: He's actually a shit hunter. The name is his pre-escape birth name, which he chose to keep.

Bram

Valids

The cured and to-be-cured that live inside the fences, excluding the Portland residents listed above.

Thomas Fineman

Thomas Fineman is a cured man and the leader of an organization called Deliria-Free America, or the DFA. They seek to lower the age at which the cure is administered, despite the risks the procedure has for younger people.

Julian Fineman

The still-uncured son of Thomas Fineman and the poster boy of the DFA. He was diagnosed with cancer at a young age and has had surgery several times. Because of this, there is a risk that the curing surgery will kill him - a risk he is all too willing to accept, making him a martyr for the DFA's cause.

• Death Seeker: He actually wants the cure to kill him, as he doesn't see the point of living.
• Face Death with Dignity: He's determined to do it, whether said death be by the risky surgery or execution for being infected with the deliria.

Other

The Scavengers

A group of Invalids who, unlike the homesteaders and the resistance, don't really care about the cure. They're made up of outcasts, people who didn't fit into the clean, orderly society. As a result they care about little besides survival, stealing and killing indiscriminately. They're feared by both the resistance and the cured, and reviled by the former as they give all Invalids a bad name.

• Always Chaotic Evil
• No Honor Among Thieves
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn
• Shadow Archetype: In contrast to the peaceful homesteaders and relatively civil resistance movement, they're ruthless and uncaring; In other words, they're everything the anti-deliria government is trying to prevent - and everything the more sane uncureds try to prevent themselves from becoming.