#3 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

[clementine]

I was not really a fan of this book the first time around, and that didn't change with a re-read a year later. The pacing was just awful. Compared to the very fast Hunger Games and reasonably fast Catching Fire, Mockingjay just dragged. I found everything in the Capitol especially unbearable, which I suppose is odd since it's supposed to be the climax. Everything building up to that was also not very interesting, and I felt that a good amount of it could have been cut.

I generally am much more sympathetic towards Katniss than most people I know, but she did become a little hard to handle in Mockingjay. It's realistic, sure, as she has been through unspeakable agonies, but the pages upon pages of her internal monologue about her pain and conflict did get a little old.

I liked that Mockingjay focused on the bigger picture of this society rather than just the Hunger Games, and I liked that it was vastly different from The Hunger Games in terms of plot (because, although I enjoyed the 75th Games in Catching Fire, you can only do the same thing a few times before it gets old). It tied in nicely with the other books, which I could especially tell this time around having read them all so close together.

I think what upsets me the most is how some of the deaths were handled. Obviously they can't all be shown or even done justice, but it bothered me that Boggs' death was given more time than Cinna's or Finnick's. Cinna is obviously a fan favourite, for good reason, and Katniss barely even reflected on his death. And Finnick! I'm biased here because Finnick is absolutely my favourite character in the series, but I really think that after Collins spent all this time developing him from a cocky, womanizing jerk to generally awesome, his death shouldn't be an aside. Honestly, his death is tragic to me and I can't let it go. It wasn't done justice. Katniss talked more about his stupid eyes than his heroic and tragic death.

So, yes, Mockingjay is a disappointing end to an otherwise rather great series.