Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Series: The Hunger Games Book 3
Year published: 2010
Pages: 455
Time It Took To Read: About a day
This book was not quite as good as the other two - the energy that drove the first two, the quest for survival is enlarged far beyond just being about Katniss and Peeta, and loses its intensity. Even though you know what the people are fighting for, it feels a somewhat pointless, aimless exercise. Katniss becomes ever more grumpy, distant and cold. There is a lot about training and planning, but Katniss doesn't witness it. Then again, Katniss notices bugger all. People die in front of her, and the pace is so breathless that this is noted two paragraphs on.
The ending was unsatisfactory. Maybe a teen audience want a happy (ish) ending, but it rang false with me. I expected questions to be answered, to know whose side people were on, to understand why this regime had been allowed to continue, but the story checks out of the action and never finishes it up. I also thought that it would be better if Katniss has died, her survival seems hollow and pointless against the rest of the story.
But in another way, that is the truth of oppression and revolution. Blood is shed and people are scarred for life, and the trauma doesn't vanish with the overthrow. Katniss feels like an inhuman instrument of war, because that's what she has become.
I enjoyed this book. I wanted to see how the saga ended; who lived, who died, and who Katniss would choose if the choice was given to her. The book did all that and added a wealth of information about Panem. But it could have been much more.
Book count: 16/50
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