Mockingjay (Hunger Games Trilogy, Book 3)

EDITED below to add my comments in response to another review as requested by comments here.

The most powerful book in the series, Collins dives straight in to the realities of rebellion and war. At times hard to read, Mockingjay unflinchingly portrays war as it is... characters fighting over how far is to far in war, loss of innocence and innocent lives, knowing which side you are fighting for, along with the role media propaganda plays. Collins set out to tell kids in a way they can understand, the realities of war behind the images we see on TV. She succeeded... and even more so she succeeded without a particular left or right wing slant to the book, which is rare for these types of works. It is dark for YA, but it is also real and in that reality is it's value as a read for teens, who in 5 or less years could be on frontlines themselves.

What makes this book so powerful is the characters that Collins creates. Over the course of the 3 books you grow to know and love them, so seeing bad things happen to them, or them make bad decisions or grow apart hurts. But this speaks to the mastery of the work. If it wasn't so good, you wouldn't care so much. In a story about war the relationships will be tested, people will be lost, and yes, people will be broken. It could not have been any different and still be the story about the realities of war that Collins wanted to tell.

Highly recommend this entire series.

***************** Below my comments in response to Suzanne G's great review (link below): ***************** http://www.amazon.com/review/R1R6D1DAM9L0ZF/ref=cm_cd_pg_pg2?ie=UTF8&asin=0439023513&cdForum=Fx229UU4T33F95N&cdPage=2&cdThread=Tx2F3UH15I2LUG3&store=books#wasThisHelpful

I think your review is one of the most coherent and thoughtful of the negative reviews, but I still can't bring myself to agree entirely with it.

One of the more minor reasons is your use of the phrase "anti-war." This book is anything but anti-war. It is clearly laid out in the two preceding books all the reasons there must be a war, that war is the only option. Life in Panem is greatly improved after the war. A true anti-war piece of literature would have found other options besides war, or would have made post war life bleaker as a result of war. I think to reduce the message to "anti-war" or "war is awful" cheapens it.

Instead this book examines the realities of war, not just that war is awful but things such as the moral relativism that occurs in times of war. Gale's idea for the nut is a great example of this. For me this is where Gale crossed the line, but it could also be equally well argued that the Nut had to be either captured or destroyed for the rebels to ever win the war and since capture was impossible, Gale's plan was the only way to prevent further loss of lives and protect against the Capitol's rule. You can see this as well in the argument of the double bomb when Katniss is questioning Beetee and Gale about "playing from the Capitol's handbook" (at what point do we become the evil we fight against), but you also see her rationalizing it post-argument and wondering why she is so against it if it can defeat the Capitol. You made a comment about there being too much talk of strategy but I think in the strategy discussions is where you saw so much revealing info about who Katniss was and why, why Coin wasn't the solution, and why Katniss and Gale couldn't be together.

The dynamic between Gale and Katniss is so interesting in this book because they have such different perspectives upon entering the war. One of the reasons Katniss is so impotent for part of this book (drugged, hiding, crying) is because she is terrified to make any decision at all. This is well in line with what I would expect of any character who had every decision she made in HG and CF backfire to unintended consequences that only hurt those around her. This puts her in stark contrast to her longtime friend, Gale who is not afraid of making tough decisions but has never had to live with the results of them (until the end of MJ).

Gale has had to fight hard for the survival of his family, he has been forced to work in the mines he hates, been beaten and whipped. He has had to watch as the girl he loved fell for another because of the Capitol's games. Yet he has never been given the opportunity to know any Capitol people closely or to truly fight back and likewise has never had to feel the ramifications (particularly as they affect others) of his actions against them.

Katniss, on the other hand, has had the opportunity to know what it is like after you kill. She understands the ramifications of her actions. She knows that your actions don't always bring about the intended consequences. She has had the chance to know, and come to care for people in the Capitol, thus humanizing her enemy. You said something about Katniss being in no position to judge Gale, but I never thought she was judging him. She understood his decisions even when she didn't agree with them (and found herself wondering why she didn't agree). I think she would have made the same decisions as Gale had she not had the experiences she had, that led her to understand things Gale could not (such as how it felt having to live with those tough decisions). But she did have those experiences, and having had them she couldn't ignore them.

You said in one of your comments that you expected to see the bond between Gale and Katniss, and I think that bond was there in the way they felt comfortable challenging one another (something they had always done and that Katniss didn't do with those who didn't have her trust) and in Gale's knowledge of how Katniss worked. But here is a relationship that was built from day 1 on survival of their families, where they always differed in their extremeness against the Capitol (Gale always being the more vocal, more extreme). And now they are placed in an environment where food and daily survival are a given for their families (who are not actively engaged in the rebellion, and are receiving food and care regardless of if Gale and Katniss provide it), and where the battle against the Capitol is their primary concern. So their reasons for being together are less, and the things that separate them are more noticeable, all their tender moments together are based on past memories, not current feelings. In battle they are partners, because that's what they've always been, partners protecting each others backs. But when Katniss needs someone she seeks out Finnick or Haymitch, because they (having experienced what she has) will get it. Here again is where I think Gale and Katniss were always a tragic love story. Because, if not for Katniss' time in the arena, they may have grown to love each other equally over the years in district 12, but they still couldn't have been together because without the time in the games and the rebellion, Katniss (firm in her decision to never marry or have children) would have never allowed herself to succumb to the love and actually be with Gale.

Another complaint of yours, I think, was the treatment of Peeta and that Katniss barely fought for him. One, I think the fact that Peeta was hijacked (while making the book harder to read because it contained less of the tender moments from the previous 2) was what made Katniss truly come to appreciate Peeta. It gave her the opportunity to want the Peeta she had so often taken for granted and we see this in Katniss' feelings as they travel on their mission throughout the Capitol. Two, As far as why she didn't fight harder to get him back... well Katniss wasn't the most emotionally self-aware person. In HG on the train back to 12 she breaks Peeta's heart. And in the beginning of CF we find her wanting to be close with him again but not doing a damn thing about it, although everything in Peeta's nature says he would have forgiven her. So basically she spends 6 months letting Peeta mope, wanting him and doing nothing until Peeta makes the move to rebuild their relationship. Throughout CF we see her repeatedly pulling from him, because she doesn't think she deserves to have him since she will never fully commit to him (with the exception of the beach scene when she lets herself go but only to try and persuade him to save his life, and only temporarily giving in to her emotions). So no, I don't really find it out of character for her to not fight for him in MJ. I think it is completely her character. She thinks because she has decided on a life without a partner she has no right to fight for him. When hijacked Peeta confronts her about who she really is (you're a piece of work, aren't you"), she agrees with his assessment. So as much as she misses and wants the old Peeta who loved her and didn't see her cold, manipulative side, she can't find it within herself to particularly disagree with everything he sees in her now or to fight against that.

This too is an interesting aspect of the story for me. Because yes pre-hijack Peeta loved her in a very self-sacrificing way. But what did he truly know of the real Katniss? He had loved her since the first time he saw her, without ever having an actual conversation with her, and by the time he got to know her, he was blinded to her faults by his love for her. Katniss only knew Peeta in terms of his loving her. She recognized his steadiness, and the hope and tenderness he brought to things, but it was always a given, she never sought to be good enough to earn it. Post-hijacking Peeta saw everything about Katniss her good, and her bad. Katniss couldn't take Peeta for granted anymore. So when they "grew together" IMO they grew to a much deeper love than they could have otherwise experienced.

As far as Katniss's decision Peeta or Gale being made in the last 4 pages... to me it was clear from HG on that Peeta was always the choice... She felt things when kissing him she never felt with Gale, any moment of inhibition (sleep medicine, or semi-consiousness, etc) she found herself wanting Peeta, even after she so-called "chose" Gale in CF she was trying to talk herself out of wanting Peeta. So maybe that wasn't played out in the text officially until the last pages, but it is weaved throughout the books. I think from the moment you read the line referencing the meadow and "a place where Peeta's child would be safe" it is clear that the book will end with Peeta's child in a meadow. So even if it passed quickly in MJ it's was foreshadowed long before. I've read a lot calling it a "default ending" because Peeta was the one who came back. And true I don't think she would have ever chased him down. It wasn't her nature to chase a man, or to feel like she deserved a man like Peeta after all she had done.

But after a time of healing ("slowly I came back to life"), and in particular healing alongside Peeta she is ready. I don't think anywhere is it evident that she is dead inside. For me, when she declares she loves Peeta that is her victory, her declaration that the war has ended. Because she never would allow herself to admit to love or have a partner under the Capitol's rule. It meant she had healed enough to allow herself to love and be loved and to have forgiven herself enough to have been deserving of love. She waited 15 more years to have kids because experience taught her that the incoming power may not be better than the old power. And to me I imagine those 15 years as the time it took to rebuild, and fully demolish the arenas and build the memorials (look at how we are 10 years past 9-11 with the memorial still under construction, rebuilding still happening, and the after effects still being fought, I think 15 years is realistic). Dead inside, means no emotions good or bad. Instead, Katniss very realistically has good days and bad days. She says "when the bad days come" (meaning that there are good days in between). She talks about the terror of being pregnant with her daughter (which is very real for someone having lost so many people she cared about), but she also talks about the joy of holding her daughter in her arms.

Anyways, those are just my thoughts. I enjoyed your review and your comments a lot because it made me really examine why I felt the way I did about the book.

This was a brilliant conclusion to the trilogy. I can only compare it to "Ender's Game" - and that is extremely high praise, indeed.

When I first closed the book last night, I felt shattered, empty, and drained.

And that was the point, I think. I'm glad I waited to review the book because I'm not sure what my review would have been.

For the first two books, I think most of us readers have all been laboring under the assumption that Katniss Everdeen would eventually choose one of the two terrific men in her life: Gale, her childhood companion or Peeta, the one who accompanied her to the Hunger Games twice. She'd pick one of them and live happily ever after with him, surrounded by friends and family. Somehow, along the way, Katniss would get rid of the awful President Snow and stop the evil Hunger Games. How one teenage girl would do all that, we weren't too sure, but we all had faith and hope that she would.

"Mockingjay" relentlessly strips aside those feelings of faith and hope - much as District 13 must have done to Katniss. Katniss realizes that she is just as much a pawn for District 13 as she ever was for the Colony and that evil can exist in places outside of the Colony.

And that's when the reader realizes that this will be a very different journey. And that maybe the first two books were a setup for a very different ride. That, at its heart, this wasn't a story about Katniss making her romantic decisions set against a backdrop of war.

This is a story of war. And what it means to be a volunteer and yet still be a pawn. We have an entirely volunteer military now that is spread entirely too thin for the tasks we ask of it. The burden we place upon it is great. And at the end of the day, when the personal war is over for each of them, each is left alone to pick up the pieces as best he/she can.

For some, like Peeta, it means hanging onto the back of a chair until the voices in his head stop and he's safe to be around again. Each copes in the best way he can. We ask - no, demand - incredible things of our men and women in arms, and then relegate them to the sidelines afterwards because we don't want to be reminded of the things they did in battle. What do you do with people who are trained to kill when they come back home? And what if there's no real home to come back to - if, heaven forbid, the war is fought in your own home? We need our soldiers when we need them, but they make us uncomfortable when the fighting stops.

All of that is bigger than a love story - than Peeta or Gale. And yet, Katniss' war does come to an end. And she does have to pick up the pieces of her life and figure out where to go at the end. So she does make a choice. But compared to the tragedy of everything that comes before it, it doesn't seem "enough". And I think that's the point. That once you've been to hell and lost so much, your life will never be the same. Katniss will never be the same. For a large part of this book, we see Katniss acting in a way that we can only see as being combat-stress or PTSD-related - running and hiding in closets. This isn't our Katniss, this isn't our warrior girl.

But this is what makes it so much more realistic, I think. Some may see this as a failing in plot - that Katniss is suddenly acting out of character. But as someone who has been around very strong soldiers returning home from deployments, this story, more than the other two, made Katniss come alive for me in a much more believable way.

I realize many out there will hate the epilogue and find it trite. At first, I did too. But in retrospect, it really was perfect. Katniss gave her life already - back when she volunteered for Prim in "The Hunger Games". It's just that she actually physically kept living.

The HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers", has a quote that sums this up perfectly. When Captain Spiers says, "The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it."

But how do you go from that, to living again in society? You really don't. So I'm not sure Katniss ever really did - live again. She just ... kept going. And there's not really much to celebrate in that. Seeing someone keep going, despite being asked - no, demanded - to do unconscionably horrifying things, and then being relegated to the fringes of society, and then to keep going - to pick up the pieces and keep on going, there is something fine and admirable and infinitely sad and pure and noble about that. But the fact is, it should never happen in the first place.

And that was the point, I think.

*Note: Review may contain spoilers

So here it is, as promised, the final installment in the phenomenal Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, my review of Mockingjay. After my positive reviews of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I had some high expectations for the final book. I was not disappointed. Mockingjay was everything I wanted and more, all in all, a great conclusion to an exciting and can't-put-down series. But be forewarned, it's nothing like the previous two...it's dark and violent and brutally honest. You may love this book or you may hate it, but there's no denying that it will take you on a sublime roller-coaster of a journey.

As I mentioned in my review of Catching Fire which offered a preview of what the world would be like in Mockingjay, this unconditionally is a book of war. The world is bleak and filled with death. It is in fact a real-life version of the Hunger Games, only the world is the arena and there are no rules nor "tricks" to defeat the Gamemasters. The single ray of light and hope is Katniss Everdeen, the symbol of the revolution and its Mockingjay. But she is still under the thumb of the covert underground District 13, which of course has its own agenda...of power, control, and authority. The driving objective of the book, and our heroine, is to kill President Snow and overthrow the Capitol. In the end, Katniss does make it to the Capitol with the help of her combat team, and she does bring down President Snow, but not before losing almost everything that she holds dear. In Mockingjay, loss is simply a casualty of war where the luxury of mourning no longer exists. It is brutal, immediate, and final.

If you're looking for a romantic conclusion or a romanticized version of Katniss being an all-conquering heroine who takes up the mantle of power as the leader of the revolution, look elsewhere. If anything, Mockingjay shows that she is human, and in the end, just a teenage girl struggling to fulfill a role she never even wanted in the first place. So what if she runs and hides in closets? I don't see that as weak, I see that as human. She is flawed and frail, as are we all. I think that that was a very realistic portrayal of being under that kind of pressure and suffering from a very real post traumatic stress disorder. It made Katniss more of a hero to me than anything else because it was so believable. It was raw and it was real.

The whole new dynamic between the tortured Peeta and Katniss was also very real. Teens have enough problems dealing with the opposite sex even without trackerjack venom playing mind-tricks between them. In my opinion, I thought that dynamic gave a lot more substance to their relationship especially with respect to the epilogue, because they actually worked to make their relationship happen. He wasn't just Peeta from the other two books doing all he could to sacrifice everything for Katniss. By the force of the Capitol's torture, he hated her, which meant that they had to find each other through all of that hate and doubt and fear, for their relationship to make it. And somehow, they managed to do just that which to me is incredibly hopeful.

I think Suzanne Collins is a brilliant writer, and what she did with Mockingjay was perfect. Although the story continues from the first two books, this book is completely different. It is gritty and raw in a way that the other two weren't. There's no fluff, no sugar-coating of personality nor of emotion. It is a world of pain, anger, and self-doubt...a very dark place. Some people may not like it or may feel that Collins deviated from the other two books. I disagree. I think what she did with Mockingjay was phenomenal. Gale became what he always had been even from book 1, The Hunger Games - he became a hunter, a soldier. Even though he and Katniss had a relationship, I always thought there was a hardness about Gale, perhaps born of the difficulty of his life. In a way, I think one can draw a parallel between Gale and Katniss, because although everyone (including the author) says that she is cold and all about her own survival, I actually think that that's false. If she was, she wouldn't have so much doubt and run away to hide in closets - this emotional fragility gives her a softness that is the antithesis of Gale. He is the consummate survivor. I wasn't surprised when the war became his driving objective, and he and Katniss grew apart. I don't think that Gale was vilified at all in this book, I think he just became what he was meant to become all along. A fighter and a leader. He, probably, was the least broken character in this book, which naturally made him one of the strongest.

On the flip side, I do have to say that there seemed to be a lot more in this book related to the war and the revolution as opposed to the characters or their emotional relationship with each other. Considering how central Prim has been to the book and to its heroine, I was surprised that her death felt so flat to me. It was almost too quick - there was not enough homage paid to her death. Same with Finnick, another central character and friend to Katniss, who just died. Their deaths felt hollow and empty. A part of me understands that Collins is on a new direction with this book-namely the emotionless callous nature of war-so maybe she was trying to convey more of a jarring casualty of war death as opposed to an unexpected (and more sacrificial emotional death like Rue or Mags in the previous books).

This takes me to the whole debate between Katniss' last objective-to kill President Snow-when instead, she kills Coin. I honestly believe that this was Katniss standing up for what she felt was the right thing to do. Instead of being driven by hate to kill Snow, she knew that Coin was only in line to be the next dictator of Panem. What she did made it possible for Paylor (who seemed to be a good leader earlier in the book) to be voted in as President. This final act is certainly not the act of a pawn. Yes, Katniss is a broken fragile heroine (which apparently has upset many people who desperately wanted her to rise to the occasion and be a Hollywood hero) but she still manages to do the right thing for Panem. Doesn't that make her a true hero? There's a lot to be said for that, and I give her total credit.

At the end of the day, these characters have survived a war. They're not going to be all warm and fuzzy and blindingly happy. They are going to be broken and messed up, just trying to find a way forward day by day. Talk to any war veteran and you will see that what Collins has portrayed in this novel is not only a realistic expectation of the circumstances, but it is also a brutally honest and painful one. Other reviewers have said that if you want a fairy-tale, this book isn't for you. But the truth is, the fairy-tale is in there. It's just not where you would expect it. In my opinion, it is in the human capacity for strength, hope, and our innate ability to survive, putting one foot in front of the other and not giving up. Katniss and Peeta, as broken as they are, manage to do that despite all the ghosts that will more than likely forever haunt them. And that's a fairy-tale ending too, if only for the fact that there's beauty and hope in such strength.

I am in awe of this book, and of its author, Suzanne Collins. One of the biggest compliments is how torn readers are in their opinions, which in my view, just goes to credit the author because she is able to illicit such a passionate response from her readership. Brilliantly written and honestly executed, I would rate Mockingjay 5 out of 5 stars.

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