Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Not exactly sure how I feel about this book. It did keep me glued to it for the two or three days it took me to read it, but it’s such a downer… and yet I liked how it didn’t go the cliché route and had Katniss doing typical heroic noble stuff. Hell, she messed up most of the time, and got plenty of people killed for nothing, but that was realistic, if you ask me. She might have been good enough to survive two Hunger Games, but she was no soldier, and too much was being asked of her, especially with all that pressure about being the Mockingjay and thus the target of the Capitol. Her constant psychological breakdowns were to be expected, though most people would have broken down completely way before she did.
I feel like Suzanne Collins just wanted to write an exploration of the human condition (basically, our capacity for cruelty), but for some reason went with a Young Adult series to do this. It will be really interesting how all of this suffering, gory violence, and psychological torture is translated to the big screen; “The Hunger Games” might have seemed to be a bit controversial for a YA movie, but that was nothing compared to this. It’s almost like the Harry Potter series jumping for the semi-lightheartedness of book two to the heavy grimness of book seven in just three books. You better grow up fast.
Speaking of Harry Potter, if “Catching Fire” reminded me of “Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire”, “Mockingjay” reminded me of “The Dark Knight Rises”. How? Well, like the Dark Knight trilogy, the beginning was good, the second part was brilliant, and the conclusion was sort of grim, nowhere as good as the second part, but a satisfying conclusion nonetheless, especially the last lines, where Katniss and Peeta use the Real or not Real game one last time.
Yeah, from time to time I’m a sucker for corny endings too.
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