I was completely wowed by The Hunger Games and then liked Catching Fire even more when I read it so I had some pretty high hopes for Mockingjay. I read Mockingjay the afternoon before my first day back at school after being at staff development training all day and I think because of my underlying stress I just wanted to push through. I wish that I had read this a little slower and a lot more thoughtfully. Which I guess is what rereading can be for.
There is so much going on in this book and in the series as a whole that I'm not even going to attempt to go there on my blog. Why? Because I am lazy! Instead I'm going to collect all the reviews and links that I have found interesting as I processed this book. Process seems like such a heavy word but it fits. I liked Mockingjay but it feels weird to say you like a book that is so sad, so violent, and so relentlessly depressing. I think I had been expecting a more kick-butt, viva la revolucion kind of story with Katniss almost like a super hero. And I know that is not so realistic but it explains why I felt so blech at the end of this book. This book is heavy. But I know if it had an everything wrapped up in a bow kind of ending I would have hated it. In fact an anonymous commenter on Read Roger says this better than I can:
"I haven't read the book, but I am getting the sense that some people are disappointed, or even angry (on other sites) because they didn't get the feel good story they wanted. The one where kicking ass actually -solves- problems, and where a girl gets to play the noble savior for a change, where war is ugly but leads ultimately to a sense of triumph and the world is better for it. I myself prefer those types of stories, even though I vehemently disagree with the ideology. My quesstion is, did Collins, engage in a bait and switch? Did readers have reason to believe that they were going to get a girl lead in a John Wayne movie?"
I will say that for my part I would have been happier with some more romantic interaction. Maybe more to the epilogue, I don't know. The romance was such a build up in the first two books (well, it was in my mind at least) and then in Mockingjay everyone is just so destroyed that there are hardly any squee type moments. But then again I want every story to have some romance in it, that's my personal bias. And I know it is silly to think that a book about the horrors of war would stop to give me some romance. Here's what another commenter, Elizabeth, had to say about romance at Read Roger:
"I was grateful for every single word in Mockingjay that touched on any part of the romantic triangle, but I could have used 250 pages more on the subject. But ladies and gentlemen, that is my agenda and not the author’s. I *always* want more about the romance."
I love reading all of the comments in the thread at Read Roger. I also really like the review at Angieville and the review at Bookshelves of Doom. I love the internet for moments like this when I am being horrible at organizing my thoughts about things.
