Mockingjay

I’ll do my best to write this without spoilers, but it’s going to prove difficult. Any spoilers will be in red and any hints will be in blue.

I don’t think I’m ever going to pick this book up for a second read. Not because it was bad or terribly written, but because I don’t think I could handle reading it again. There will be a slight, non-descript spoiler in the end of this sentence, past the colon (in red), so if you really don’t want to know, avert the sentence: There is just no fixing some things that happen and I really thought, hey, this can’t happen… this person can’t die, and yet…

I can draw no real complaints about the book (though Collins is more of a character development author than a style author), save that everything established in the previous books was lost. The two first books both had the same ‘mood’, if you know what I mean. Nothing happened that had me dropping my jaw, nothing made me stop, set the book down and gather my thoughts before continuing. Certainly there were twists I didn’t expect, but nothing that I couldn’t connect the dots with. It’s like this is a third in a different series. Like, say you have a friend that moved away and you go and visit her. The first time you visit her, she’s the same as when she left. The second time you visit her, she’s changed a little, but is still very similar to how she was. But then you wait some time and visit her a third time and she’s hardly the same person. She looks the same, but everything else has changed. I felt that the world Mockingjay explored was strange and different altogether.

Mockingjay was nothing I expected. It was even a bit like a nightmare... except you don’t wake up and realize that every awful thing you dreamed did not happen. Because it did happen. And this may be construed as a spoiler, though no surprise to anyone… hardly any of my semi ‘predictions’ came to pass. But I don’t even really blame my blinders for that. I didn’t see most of what was coming. The first third of the book fell into step with the first two books mood-wise, but after that it became something new that, though not necessarily bad, was so much more complex than its predecessors. The most significant change to The Hunger Games Trilogy with Mockingjay that I find is that The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, though violent and interesting, they were not quite so multipart as the last installment. The violence was different, too. Though detailed in all books, it was less… devastating, I think, in the earlier books. It settled strangely with me, actually. It was so unlike I expected from Suzanne Collins.

Maybe I didn’t like it. I don’t know. Maybe it was that all the hopes I built up were shattered and I had to face that things I didn’t want to happen did. Maybe it was that I am strangely invested in the characters and I still am, long past the final page. I don’t think it was enough. I really don’t. I think what very much bothered me was that Katniss was victimized from all sides and never truly won. She wasn’t defeated… but not being defeated isn’t the same as winning. I read through both previous books hungrily, never doubting Katniss would triumph over everything and would always be the Victor. But, really, nobody won. Maybe it’s that Mockingjay made me feel that the war was real, because for the characters that Collins dreamed up it was. It was alsothat Katniss’ ever-changing opinion, circumstances and bad lot prompted thought-provoking moments that came from all sides, very much unlike The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.

I just didn’t expect it to be like this. Maybe it’s because it’s late. I don’t know. But I don’t think I will ever read Mockingjay again, because I don’t think my heart could take it. I'll see how I feel about it when I wake up, and add my more comprehensive thoughts once at least Anneke and Becca had read it.

Toodle Pip.