#3 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

[Amanda]

3.5

Original review: http://onabookbender.com/2012/05/09/review-catching-fire-mockingjay-by-suzanne-collins/

So, we have finally arrived at the end, haven’t we? I had not originally planned to do this as a double review [with Catching Fire], but I don’t know that there is really much to say about this book. While I did not hate Mockingjay as some do, I do think it is the weakest of the three books. It just doesn’t have the gripping story line that both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire did. Mockingjay does have an eerie distrustfulness to it, though, that makes it bleak and hopeless. One would think that being rescued by District 13 would actually be a good thing. It is not. It is just as bad. Or worse.

Life under the Capitol with yearly Hunger Games is brutal enough, but there is something about the war and the rebels in Mockingjay that reveal the true brutality of human nature. No side is exempt from this brutality, and I think almost every character goes through their own period of utter ruthlessness. Sometimes it was really hard to like the characters we had come to love (or, like reasonably well) and sometimes — okay, most of the time — they were put through some really shitty situations. These characters change. Drastically. No one comes out unscathed.

No one.

And I kind of liked how much hell Suzanne Collins put her characters through.