Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

[nannah]

SPOILERS WITHIN!!!! This book is really hard to rate. I hate it, I love it. It was wonderful in the way that I could not put it down--I NEEDED to continue reading and couldn't stop. But there were a lot of things I also didn't like about it.



For me, Mockingjay was about the loss of a hero. And I'm not talking about Panem's hero or the Capital's hero or anything like that within Mockingjay's pages. I'm talking about me. The reader's hero died in this book. Katniss's character seemed really weak and fickle. I can't even count how many times the scenes changed because someone sedated her. I'm not saying she shouldn't have been traumatized by everything thrown her way, but we're robbed of the strong, willful Katniss we've grown to love over the course of the first two books. She became a passive hero, one that just follows the path the book sets out for her, not carving her own.



She even seemed to become the very idea of a tribute that she had always rejected before (which is something that really endeared her to me as a heroine). In the last book, one of the most horrible parts was when she shot that woman and killed her without hesitation. This is what she did NOT want to do (she mentioned this several times in her thoughts). She didn't want to turn into the monster that the Capital wanted her to become. But she did anyway.



Many sequences in the book seemed very rushed, and even without purpose. I think the biggest flaw of this book was the lack of emotion. Katniss mourned the death of Rue more than her sister Prim. What? How can that even BE? And the very death of Prim seemed, to me, the most wrong thing Collins could do to to her trilogy. The whole commencement of Katniss's adventures began with her stepping forward to save Prim. In that way, the evils of the book one, and the heroes lost. Everything was for naught.



And Finnick. He grows on us as one of the most lovable characters, and yet he's killed off with maybe just a few sentences and Katniss moves on. So many characters were killed off without real purpose. There was no emotional aftershock or mourning. It just happened.



AND then the romance. The love triangle between Katniss and Peeta and Gale seemed to be brushed aside. I hated, absolutely HATED that Katniss chose Peeta by default. Because Gale moved away and got that "job." It's one more example of how Katniss was a passive character in this book. She let everyone else make her decisions for her, and it did not endear her to me at all. I started to dislike her, and that's HORRIBLE for a book's heroine, at least in this kind of book! The whole reasoning with the dandelion was lovely, but it wasn't enough. When did Katniss and Peeta's relationship rekindle? How did they meld back together? Why were we robbed of these sweet scenes? I hated that everything was thrown at us at the end in a couple of paragraphs. I love Peeta, and I loved the tender and uneasy and at times awkward relationship he and Katniss had, but we were completely robbed of any of this at the end. They just came together because there really wasn't anything more for them to do.



In the end, Katniss was weaker than when she began. Yes, I know, war does this to people. But as a heroine for a book with so many broken characters, I just wanted SOMEONE to rise up at the end of the book higher than when they started. I wanted a CONCLUSION of their characters. A well-rounded arc to end them. Not just a fizzled end.



So I love and hate this book. I love it because it had so much tension and Katniss got her Peeta in the end and for the Finnick characterization and for the sometimes beautiful scenes. But I hate it for its countless, horrendous flaws.