Book Log 36/2011 - Suzanne Collins: Mockingjay – Hunger Games #3

[jacey]

Suzanne Collins: Mockingjay – Hunger Games #3

Beware spoilers,especially for the first two books in the series

Katniss has been snatched out of the arena, some of her fellow combatants have survived as well, but Peeta has been captured by President Snow and it's only a matter of time before he'll be used against Katniss and the revolutionaries. For Katniss has become the Mockingjay, the symbol of revolution, but it seems that no one is letting her in on the plans. Frustrated at every turn, she frets, even though she's been reunited with her boyfriend Gale.

Dark as the first two books were this strays into even darker territory. Katniss is an uneasy revolutionary and the president of the rebels is as bad as President Snow in her own way – power hungry and eager to use Katniss but not to give her anything in return except medication and platitudes. Gale has found his feet and is rapidly turning into a career revolutionary. But having become the Mockingjay Katniss is out of step and out of place.

This is an uncomfortable book with Katniss struggling to find her way through a moral and emotional maze, to keep her loved ones safe and to rehabilitate Peeta, eventually rescued after his time in President Snow's mind-laboratories. In the end she does find where she belongs, but it's not what we expected at the outset – but then, life rarely is.

I won't say I enjoyed this book unreservedly, but I am very glad I read it and completed the trilogy. There's a fashion for dystopian YA literature at the moment and this is likely to be fostered by the upcoming Hunger Games movie. I'm not sure I could read too much of it, though as a teen I would have swallowed this whole along with other examples like Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (which I also liked immensely). Will it be a bigger fad than sparkly vampires? Only time will tell.

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I'm also glad I read this, but I won't reread it. I found the ending and Katniss's final home to be surprising and satisfying, but also very depressing.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, me too. I like the way she dealt with Coin and Snow, but I found the aftermath depressing and not very satisfying. I missed a proper resolution with Gale. I also wondered whether what happened to Prim was one kick too many. It kind of made the whole volunteering in the first place a waste in that she didn't in the end, achieve what she set out to do, which was to protect her little sister. It slightly soured it for me. There's dystopian and dystopian, and that was one step too far.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I agree about Prim. That took it over the top for me.