Mockingjay Review

If you have read the first two books in the Hunger Games series but haven't read the concluding book, then you will want to stop reading to avoid spoiling yourself.

First thing, let me make it clear that I LOVE(d) this series. The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are well written and the stories compelling. I was very vested in the characters and looking forward to the release of the last book.

I should also note that I listened to Mockingjay, and I don't always pick up things as well in that medium. So, once I've digested the story for a few days, I'll go back and read it on paper and see if I feel differently.

Here are my initial impressions.

* I didn't particularly like the book (and some parts of it I LOATHED). I found the storyline disjointed. Collins was all over the place. Whereas the first two books were very focused, Mockingjay was not.

* Where did the strong Katniss go? She was so angry in the first book about her mother's emotional abandonment when her father was killed in the mines, yet Katniss did the same thing in this book (and the end of Catching Fire actually). I got so tired of the angst. Where was the strong Katniss who stepped up and took her sister's place in the games? Where was the girl who stood up to the Capitol and decorated and sang goodbye to Rue? It was so tedious the way Katniss persisted in blaming herself for everything--so much of which she had absolutely nothing to do with. On the one hand she recognized she'd been a pawn before and was a pawn now and yet it was all her fault? Ugh!

* In the earlier books I was led to believe Gale had more character. When he got involved in the development of that loathsome weapon, I lost a lot of respect for him. That device is the kind of thing they're using in the middle east, and he went way down in my estimation that he would even consider using it. The fact that a device of that design was what killed Katniss's sister Prim, I believe, means there's blood on Gale's hands. I so desperately wanted someone to speak up and say that by even considering weapons like those made the rebels no better than the people in the Capitol. You can't walk in crap and not expect to stink when you're done.

* I think that having Katniss vote to continue the Hunger Games against the children of the Capitol leaders took away Katniss's moral character and made her completely unsympathetic to me. She became a hypocrite. In the epilogue she whines about her children (and what's with calling them "the girl" and "the boy"--don't they have names?) learning about the Games in school and knowing their parents had been a part of them. How about telling them that you wanted to continue that travesty? Not only did it completely compromise her character, the storyline went nowhere because the Games were not continued! Showing that served no purpose. We already knew President Coin was just another scumbag like Snow. We didn't need to sully Katniss (and Haymitch who followed her suit) by having her agree to that while giving a lame excuse that it was for Prim (who would never have agreed to that). Katniss, agreeing with Johanna and Enobaria? She didn't seen any red flags there about her reasoning?

We see countless example of man's inhumanity to man every day when we watch the news or read a newspaper. I was led to believe this would be a story about how this group of people (perhaps even just a portion of them--like Katniss and her small group) beat down the evil tyrant while showing the noble side of mankind. She managed to do in the first book. What good is served in becoming the very thing you hate?

* I think some of the characters we came to love who were killed in this book (like Finnick) deserved a little more time in memoriam. I would have appreciated less of Katniss's self-absorbed angst and more of her recognizing and appreciating the good people who sacrificed so much to help her. She mentions them briefly, but it's rushed. I don't mind coming away from a book moved and crying. I don't like coming away from a book agitated and angry.

* The ending was too long in some places and not long enough in others. The transition from Katniss and Peeta barely speaking to each other to having children (just because he wanted them so badly) was poorly done. I know they both needed to heal after what they'd been through, but it's too abrupt. There was magic in some of the images in the earlier books (like the vision of a world where Peeta's children could grow up happily) that are referenced in this one. Unfortunately the beauty from the early books didn't make the jump to this one.

This book could have--should have--been so much more. I'll see if I like it any better in the second read.

Now I have to go and read something really cheery to bring me out of the gray funk I've been in since I finished listening to it.