Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3) (utgåvan 2010)

This was hard to read. I don't like my fiction so gritty, but the story was so well crafted, I really wanted to know how it was going to end. It's been a long time since I've read anything where the end wasn't easily predicted. I'm having a hard time deciding if the violence was excessive or appropriate, or even somehow necessary to the story. Hmmm. ( )

This was a fun read, but yellow beams that melt your flesh off and purple lights that send blood spurting out of every orifice?! It's not the violence that offends me, it's the fact that I'd expect those sort of plot lines out of Calvin & Hobbes or my eighth grade journal, right next to the entry where my vegetables jumped off the lunch tray and held the principal hostage until we sent in the meatloaf crisis response team. Collin's skill to keep the reader interested in the story despite wanting to punch Katniss in the face is unparalleled. ( )

I was so excited to get to the final book of the trilogy! Similar to the first two books of the trilogy, I couldn't put this book down. Now that I'm done reading the trilogy, I want more! I want to learn what happens next. ( )

I just lost my first attempt at this review. Gah. Basically: I think the plot arc is perfect and concludes the trilogy just right. The course of the rebellion makes sense, the actions of Coin and Snow make sense, even the actions of the various former victors and most of the other supporting characters.

Three things bothered me, though. One was that with Katniss as the narrator, her PTSD-induced haze, her lost wanderings, bog down the plot. I think it was pretty well portrayed (painful for me to read, in fact), and it's good to see the consequences of the things Katniss experiences actually explored in fiction. But she's powerless a good bit of the time and that weakens the story. We don't see moments of real, high drama, and sometimes we do but only through Katniss' emotional haze. It's effective in one way, but it makes it difficult at the same time, and I think few (if any) writers could pull it off.

Two: The resolution of the love triangle. It was already starting to bother me in Catching Fire, but now it really did. I didn't know who I wanted Katniss to end up with, but I didn't want it to be easy, I didn't want it to be a foregone conclusion by the time Katniss got round to making a decision. I wanted the hurt to be visceral and real.

The characterisations of Gale and Peeta have wandered from the believable, which doesn't help -- more in Peeta's case than Gale's, admittedly. I started calling him St Peeta.

Three: The death of Prim. It seems almost... gratuitous. How much more pain can we inflict on Katniss Everdeen, our martyr-hero? I suppose it makes sense as a decision for the characters, seen that way, but god, Collins is a hard woman.

For the most part, I think I enjoyed it. The last couple of chapters felt rushed, after the slow build of the rebellion. I wasn't immensely happy with the way the characters acted in the last... 20% or so of the book. But it concluded the trilogy well and logically. ( )

Katnis Everdeen ha sobrevivido dos veces a Los juegos del hambre, pero no está a salvo. La revolución se extiende y, al parecer, todos han tenido algo que ver en el meticuloso plan, todos excepto Katniss. Aun así su papel en la batalla final es el más importante de todos. Katniss debe convertirse en el Sinsajo, en el símbolo de la rebelión... a cualquier precio. ¡Que empiecen los septuagésimo sextos juegos del hambre!