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4.5 ★★★★★
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★★★★★ 5
Excellent conclusion; stays true to Katniss's trait of being a survivor
Format: Hardcover
This is the third, and final, book in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. If you read the first two books, you will read this one. All I can say is to be prepared for one heck of a ride. A lot happens in this book and Collins doesn't hold off on killing off a lot of people.
The book starts where Catching Fire left off. Katniss is in District 13 with Gale, her mom, and her sister Prim. The Rebel group based in District 13 is trying to get Katniss to take up the Mockingjay symbol and become the face of their revolution. Katniss is unsure if she wants to go this route or not. Peeta is still missing and presumed captured by President Snow and being held in the Capital. Katniss's journey eventually leads to the capital itself and a final face-off with President Snow.
This is a hard book to review without spoilers but I will give it my best shot. The pace of this book is relentless. Collins does not pull punches when it comes to killing off large groups of people, as well as people we love and care about. This is a dark book, and that is putting it mildly.
As far as characterization goes we begin to see even more of what defines Katniss as a character; she is not sentimental, she is a survivor foremost and that it what sets her apart from others. A lot of the decisions made by Katniss in this book are driven by that personality trait. In fact at one point Gale and Peeta are discussing Katniss and who she will "choose". Gale sums it up perfectly when he says something to the effect of "Katniss will choose whoever she can't survive without."
On to other characters. The ruthlessness we saw in Gale at the end of the Catching Fire is built upon in this book. Gale is ruthless and practical to the point of dislike at times. He begins to look like a character that likes what Katniss stands for, rather than who she is. At the end of book two I was Team Gale all the way. I thought that Gale and Katniss had more in common in survival instincts and could pull off a good relationship based on those characteristics. As this book starts and continues, we see a side of Gale that is more ruthless and dispassionate than ever before.
In order to avoid spoilers I won't say much about Peeta, except that he is back in the story for the second half of the book.
Collins does an excellent job at showing both sides of the story. You get to see both the good the rebel forces do, and the harm they cause in rebelling against the Capital. As Katniss and team enter the capital, Collins relates the Capital takeover as yet another type of dome just like previous "Hunger Games" this is an interesting idea and ties the three novels together well. In each of them we see our teams of characters struggling to stay alive, doing things no one should have to do. In each book there are brutal deaths.
There's quite the twist at the end of this book. People may be surprised at who Katniss kills. All I have to say about this is that I was satisfied with the choice Katniss made, and had actually been hoping that Collins would have it play out that way. Katniss's actions at the end seemed like the best way to follow Katniss's beliefs, while trying to ensure the best ending for humanity as a whole.
The epilogue was interesting. It was kind of nice to get a definitive ending to everything that played out before. It wrapped things up nicely. Still, I didn't think the epilogue was necessary and I think the book would have actually been a bit better and more thought-provoking without it. As with the previous books the writing style of this book was incredibly readable and engaging; no matter people think of the plot, you have to admit Collins is one heck of a great writer.
Overall I thought this was an excellent conclusion to the series. Readers may not like how some of things play-out; but I thought they played out realistically and I liked the decisions Katniss made at the end...I thought her decisions really stayed true to the core personality trait of her character, which was to survive. I am eagerly awaiting whatever Collins comes up with next.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2010
★★★★★ 4
Mockingjay - 4 Stars
Format: Hardcover
Warning! This review is written differently then all my other reviews. It does contain spoilers throughout, but you will get a warning once spoilers will begin.
The third and final book in the Hunger Games trilogy - Mockingjay has been one of the most anticipated books of fans of this much loved series. The first two books - The Hunger Games and Catching Fire - told a story rich in characters we all fell in love with and rooted for from beginning to end. With the release of Mockingjay readers were more then excited to find out the conclusion to this epic tale.
Giving Mockingjay the 4 stars that I did was in fact a hard choice to make. Writing this review is tough. I thought giving myself a few days or longer might clear away the questions I had to make writing this easier, which needless to say didn't work out as planned. I usually don't write a review with spoilers, nor do I write reviews where I talk things out at such length, but it needed to be done and this time there's just no way around it. So, please know that from this point on I will be addressing key points that will give things away - so be warned there will be SOME spoilers laced throughout!
****Spoiler Alert****
First, I have to say that I read half of this book with my breath held and the other half with a kind of, the only way I can explain it was that I was lost. The characters felt so different from where we left them in Catching Fire that at times it was hard to recognize them from the previous two books.
Katniss didn't seem like her normal fighting self. And I often wondered if that was because she questioned Coin and if she even wondered if things would be different with Coin as president. In the beginning of the book when they are trying to talk Katniss into being the Mockingjay there was a conversation with Coin that made me believe she felt she not only didn't have much of a choice in the matter but that she questioned just what Coin's true motives are behind everything. Is this why Katniss wasn't her normal fighting self? Was she just tired of running a race in a never ending up hill battle where she then believed no matter what she did the way of the world would never change? Or did she believe there was nothing she, just one teenage girl could really do to make positive changes in the world of Panem? Or was it the fact that she was pretty much injured throughout the whole book?
The lack of Peeta was also hard and what little interaction these two had I enjoyed more so then I did with her and Gale. I found Gale to be more then lost within Mockingjay, and found how easily he went from the hunter, gather and provider to uncaring and cold soldier a bit too easily. I mean everything with the mountain and his answer to how to take it down was more then callous and shocking to say the least. However the flip side is, Panem is a rough place to live and was Gale finally pushed over the edge too? Still, either way you look at this, it just didn't feel like "Gale" to me. Sad but true.
The ending was shocking. I felt it was rushed by many pages and left more holes in it then Swiss cheese. I mean, Gale is a HUGE character and to leave his story so open ended was wrong and extremely harsh. There was no closure with Gale - he's there one page and gone the next. I felt that Katniss's mother was selfish on so many levels. I understand all that her mother has gone through from before the beginning of book one, however Katniss has suffered through SO much for her whole family and all the people within Panem and her mother can't take a trip back to their home to make sure if her now only daughter is alright? That just didn't sit well with me and actually made me frustrated. I mean common! Look at all Katniss did and all she survived for the love of her family! And yes, I know Peeta and Haymitch had more of a hand in keeping Katniss alive then I'm giving credit here, however I'm really talking about how her relationship with her mother was within those last few pages of this book.
These were the main aspects of the book that I didn't agree with or understand. However, I did give Mockingjay 4 stars and now that I worked through all the negativity and got that out of the way, I believe that in all reviews, the ending should focus on the good and that's just what I plan to do here.
Peeta being tortured was a given, this wasn't a good thing, but... let me explain - anyone who reads Mockingjay will know its coming. However the degree to which this is done is not only epic but fit with the one character that I felt never changed - and that was Snow.
Everything that was shocking to me in this whole series is what I found as part of the best of the best. Peeta being tortured and just how he was tortured was not only a key part in his story as mentioned above, it was so true to Snow that anything less then this just would have been far off course for this ruthless character. The struggles in Peeta because of just how he was tortured, and then within his relationship with Katniss - it opened up and showed a different side to the two. I might not have liked what I saw, but if you think back to their relationship throughout the whole trilogy this was just another uphill battle they are forced to climb to figure out what their relationship meant to each other.
The story did give me many conclusions and endings to main and subplots. Where there might have been some holes, however there were answers and endings - both good and bad. The good surpassed the bad. The wedding between Finnick and Annie gave hope to everyone that was much needed throughout all of Panem. The little bits of strength that Katniss gains from Finnick were nuggets of gold within the pages of Mockingjay. Finnick, while suffering alone was able to rise above everything to be there for Katniss when she needed to be pulled up and out of the haze I often found her in.
Collins writing was there shining through again in Mockingjay, and while I didn't agree with many parts of this conclusion, sometimes a clear happy ending just isn't in the cards and that alone is sometimes need and often is refreshing in books. In each of the three titles there had to be bad to get through to the good and it's the same with Mockingjay.
I recently read something about how people are upset with the Epilogue and I can see where some would feel it was forced and some might find it a cop out. Yet I've read it a couple of times and I go back and forth on this one. Today I see how wonderful it is. For me, it shows that all Katniss struggled for wasn't lost. That in the end she won. Peeta won and that in the end they both found just want they needed in the world and each other. That nothing is perfect and everything isn't easy and sometimes you have to struggle to get to the good in life.
All in all, Collins has written another book that many will be thinking and talking about for a long time to come. With the end of any much beloved trilogy or series there's always a chance people will be upset because of how things ended and without a doubt there might be people not pleased by various things in this book. There might be things I didn't agree with, nor understand; however, in the end, I do have to say that the good outweighed the bad. I'll be suggesting these books for a long time to come to other fellow readers and I'll look forward to rereading each of these books numerous times. I'm more then looking forward to seeing just what Collins writes next. Enjoy.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2010
★★★★★ 5
Unexpected Direction, but Perfection (Potential spoilers, but pretty vague)
Format: Hardcover
This was a brilliant conclusion to the trilogy. I can only compare it to "Ender's Game" - and that is extremely high praise, indeed.
When I first closed the book last night, I felt shattered, empty, and drained.
And that was the point, I think. I'm glad I waited to review the book because I'm not sure what my review would have been.
For the first two books, I think most of us readers have all been laboring under the assumption that Katniss Everdeen would eventually choose one of the two terrific men in her life: Gale, her childhood companion or Peeta, the one who accompanied her to the Hunger Games twice. She'd pick one of them and live happily ever after with him, surrounded by friends and family. Somehow, along the way, Katniss would get rid of the awful President Snow and stop the evil Hunger Games. How one teenage girl would do all that, we weren't too sure, but we all had faith and hope that she would.
"Mockingjay" relentlessly strips aside those feelings of faith and hope - much as District 13 must have done to Katniss. Katniss realizes that she is just as much a pawn for District 13 as she ever was for the Colony and that evil can exist in places outside of the Colony.
And that's when the reader realizes that this will be a very different journey. And that maybe the first two books were a setup for a very different ride. That, at its heart, this wasn't a story about Katniss making her romantic decisions set against a backdrop of war.
This is a story of war. And what it means to be a volunteer and yet still be a pawn. We have an entirely volunteer military now that is spread entirely too thin for the tasks we ask of it. The burden we place upon it is great. And at the end of the day, when the personal war is over for each of them, each is left alone to pick up the pieces as best he/she can.
For some, like Peeta, it means hanging onto the back of a chair until the voices in his head stop and he's safe to be around again. Each copes in the best way he can. We ask - no, demand - incredible things of our men and women in arms, and then relegate them to the sidelines afterwards because we don't want to be reminded of the things they did in battle. What do you do with people who are trained to kill when they come back home? And what if there's no real home to come back to - if, heaven forbid, the war is fought in your own home? We need our soldiers when we need them, but they make us uncomfortable when the fighting stops.
All of that is bigger than a love story - than Peeta or Gale. And yet, Katniss' war does come to an end. And she does have to pick up the pieces of her life and figure out where to go at the end. So she does make a choice. But compared to the tragedy of everything that comes before it, it doesn't seem "enough". And I think that's the point. That once you've been to hell and lost so much, your life will never be the same. Katniss will never be the same. For a large part of this book, we see Katniss acting in a way that we can only see as being combat-stress or PTSD-related - running and hiding in closets. This isn't our Katniss, this isn't our warrior girl.
But this is what makes it so much more realistic, I think. Some may see this as a failing in plot - that Katniss is suddenly acting out of character. But as someone who has been around very strong soldiers returning home from deployments, this story, more than the other two, made Katniss come alive for me in a much more believable way.
I realize many out there will hate the epilogue and find it trite. At first, I did too. But in retrospect, it really was perfect. Katniss gave her life already - back when she volunteered for Prim in "The Hunger Games". It's just that she actually physically kept living.
The HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers", has a quote that sums this up perfectly. When Captain Spiers says, "The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it."
But how do you go from that, to living again in society? You really don't. So I'm not sure Katniss ever really did - live again. She just ... kept going. And there's not really much to celebrate in that. Seeing someone keep going, despite being asked - no, demanded - to do unconscionably horrifying things, and then being relegated to the fringes of society, and then to keep going - to pick up the pieces and keep on going, there is something fine and admirable and infinitely sad and pure and noble about that. But the fact is, it should never happen in the first place.
And that was the point, I think.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2010
★★★★★ 5
Can't Stop Thinking About It
Format: Hardcover
I originally wrote this review in my Devo journal, so some of the thoughts might seem a little scrambled. But I cover most of the points that stood out to me the most. It's a bit lengthy, but most of it was premeditated, and I needed to stop talking to myself.
Let me start out by saying I really liked this book. It was a thrilling and terrifying ending to this fantastic series. The other two books I would give 5 out of 5 stars because I thought they were better (Mockingjay I gave 4.5/5, I rounded up). But I still like Mockingjay a lot.
Two things stand out to me the most about it. The first is the fact that the tone and mood of this book was entirely and undeniably depressing. Completely apart from Finnick and Prim's deaths (which do contribute to the sad feel), Katniss's attitude throughout is always occupied with worries about her next action and the situations with Peeta and Gale. She felt sorry for herself a lot, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I mean anyone in her place would feel that way. Also Katniss and Gale's relationship is strained, and they didn't share many happy moments together.
The second thing that really made an impact on me is the lack of closure about characters at the end of the book. We got a couple sentences on the whereabouts of Gale, Katniss's mother, and Annie, but what's happened to Johanna ? Was Haymitch a big part of Katniss and Peeta's life ? Who, if anyone, did Gale marry and start a family with ? Did Annie raise her son successfully Finnick ? Did Katniss's prep team ever see anything beautiful again ? I mean, I just felt so uncomplete. And I'm not saying this is a flaw to the novel. Maybe Ms. Collins wanted to leave us with a sense of mystery to have us use our own imaginations, or maybe this is how Katniss felt (Doubt it, though) ? I just want to know if Katniss ever saw Gale again. Also if the reason Katniss and Gale didn't end up together was that it was HIS bomb that killed Prim. I was really surprised when Katniss and Peeta ended up together. We got a bit of closure about them, but not enough to settle my mind. I would have liked to know her children's names.
In this book a lot of people die, but the one that really shocked the crap out of me was Prim's. Because SHE is the reason, not so much the cause, of why this revolution started. It was Katniss's love for her sister that made uprisings begin. I really felt Katniss's pain when Prim died, and I was surprised she could even continue living. It took two reads of the book to figure out it was Gale and Beetee's bomb that killed Prim. I think this is the reason that Katniss and Gale didn't end up together. Every time Katniss looked at Gale, she would think of Prim, and that is enough to mentally destroy anyone.
Johanna is another person I would have liked to know what happened to because she grew to be one of my favorite characters in this book. She became friends with Katniss, when most of her friends were gone. Johanna had lost everyone she loved, but in the midst of all that she found Katniss, someone to love.
When I first read the big scene of the crew running around the tunnels of the capital, I got freaked out. Mostly because of the mutts that chase them throughout the tunnels, and eventually end Finnick's life. Their descriptions were terrifying: white scaly creatures resembling humans, but in lizard form. The hissing they made while tracking down Katniss. Do not read this part in a dark room whilst home alone. If I was younger, I would have gotten nightmares.
Overall I loved this book a great deal. After I finished it the first time, I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I had to read it again. Despite the lack of closure and the sad nature of this book, Ms. Collins has really proved to be an amazing storyteller with a titanic imagination, almost JK Rowling-like. The fact that any normal person can come up with this intricate world is beyond me. One the whole, well done, Ms. Collins, well done.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2010
★★★★★ 5
Bleak and Beautiful
Format: Hardcover
If you liked The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, this book may not be for you.
This review will contain spoilers.
Okay, let me back up. I loved Mockingjay. But I think I loved it for reasons that a lot of other people didn't like it. Namely that it broke conventions and moved out of the comfort zone that the previous two books sit nicely in. It's hard to call 'Children murdering each other in an arena for the enjoyment of the masses' a comfort zone. But considering how disturbing the premise of the story is, the writing style and content of the first two books were clearly written in a safe way that were meant to appeal more to younger teens. This is not to say I (being in my early 20's) did not enjoy the first two books, but while reading them I got the same feeling I get when watching an action movie with lots of killing but little blood. There was that loss of immersion because the content did not match up nicely with the mood. In a kids movie, for instance, if a child breaks their arm let's say, it isn't necessary to explain the wound in detail, because the focus of a kids movie is not going to be about the injury, but rather the consequences of the injury. In a book like The Hunger Games or Catching Fire, though, the injury or kill should be in your face, to provide that contrast between the self-absorbed Capitol citizens and the horrendous nature of the Hunger Games themselves. To me, when that level of detail is added, it really brings the seriousness of the book's reality to the forefront, and when the writing is reserved, so is my emotional connection to it.
Mockingjay is very much a departure from the previous two books, and even though it has a couple of problems, they are forgivable to me because the rest of the book is so masterful. First off, Mockingjay is very dark, which is something I wanted from the first two books. It was hinted at, but the author never really brought me to those depths along with Katniss. Here though, there are points in which it is so dark I almost wished they'd give me a little light. And you really don't get any until the end. It could not have been as easy book to write, especially since it was so different from the previous two, and I imagine the author knew she was going to be alienating some fans of the first two, but I give her a lot of credit for that.
Secondly, because of the way the second book ends and this one begins, the whole love triangle thing that I thought was so unnecessary really isn't an issue throughout most of this book. Those two aspects are the two main reasons that this book really worked for me. It was almost like the author took my two biggest complaints from the first two and did away with both of them, allowing this trilogy to become what I wanted it to be from the beginning. Because of this, though, I know that there were probably a lot of unhappy readers when this book was finished. I can't call anyone else wrong, really, or myself right. This is just what I took away from Mockingjay, and for me, it was pretty fantastic. I can easily see how other readers might have been left feeling like 'No seriously, where's the real third book?'
Thirdly, the characterization in this book really stuck with me. Having seen a lot of movies and read a lot of books, you get to know cliches in stories pretty well. There are the general ones that everyone seems to know about, but over time you start to develop your own. There are broad cliches and ones suited to different genres and so on and so forth. But one of the other things that I loved about Mockingjay was that even though there were some overt cliches (and let's be honest, few things are original anymore and it is hard to avoid cliches), there were also some very surprising instances towards the end and I was pleasantly surprised by them. Most importantly, I have read quite a few reviews that talk about how Katniss never really came into her own. She never started to make decisions on her own. In The Hunger Games, as the books opens you are told she is essentially very emotionally damaged, by the physical absence of her father, and then the emotional absence of her mother. Katniss becomes the sole provider for the family. She is a very flawed person, and as the trilogy goes on, instead of overcoming obstacles, she seems, more often than not, to get run over by them. At the end of Mockingjay I began to hope (as did she) that she would just die, because she was so tortured and damaged that it would have been a relief to find a release from all the suffering. But there was nothing. However, although I agree that Katniss never became the consummate hero, I did think that there was a climax of sorts, with her internal struggle to assert control over her life. I am referring to the execution at the end. Katniss finally makes a decision on her own, knowing that the consequence will be death. She truly believes that her action will end her own life, and she does it anyways. I think the only problem with the scene is that her emotional feeling is not something that is explored by the author. Even though there is really only one reason why she does what she does, I felt that it could have been explored even a little bit. And even afterwards no one asks why she did it, as if they all know why. But if that's the case, then why didn't they do something about it? That's my only real gripe about the story.
I have also heard a lot of complaints about the ending. How it was much too fast, and not enough time was given to explaining what became of all the characters. And especially that they were unhappy about the way in which Katniss and Peeta ended up together. But I have to say, the Katniss-Gale-Peeta triangle was annoying from the get for me. It was an unwelcome distraction at the end of book one and all throughout book two. I liked that things did not end happily-ever-after. And I know those who complain about the ending weren't necessarily looking for some fairy-tale ending, I guess for me, I just really connected with the idea that life can leave you damaged, and you just can't recover from some things. You just do you best to get on with your life the best you can. And in the case of Katniss and Peeta, it made sense to me that they would end up together. They both experienced horror in multiple forms, they were both left very broken, so to me it was logical that they would end up together. I liked that things were left a bit unresolved, like they have to deal with their past on a daily basis, but that regardless of it, they have made the best of their lives that they could. If they had made some progress at the end, it would really have felt unrealistic. I liked that they really only returned to "normal" from being completely ravaged, instead of turning into emotional stones and brushing everything off. Their lives had holes, their bodies were burnt and tortured, but they emerged from the other side and continued surviving.
All in all, I would recommend reading the first two books just to get to this one. And nothing against the first two. They are both very good for what they are.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2011