Julia

This was incredible. I don't just mean incredible as in extremely well done, which it mostly is, but that it continued to shock me, draw me in, thrash me around, and throw me out again. The book mingled with my own dreams, and the fact that I read it whilst sick and in isolation made it all the more riveting and relatable.

For me, this was not a feel-good book, nor did it have a particularly “happy” ending. It made me angry, but this was because I cared so deeply for Zan, for Burrum, Lishum, Sonte, for everyone. I felt a little played, too, because this book has been lying around for as long as I can remember – I believe my mother read it back in the 70's – and the cover had sparked my own ideas about what the book was about. Reading the back cover, for some reason my brain concluded that the two naked children were faeires. Thus, I expected a child-friendly, fantastical story in which Zan discovered a magical world that she could easily go back and forth from. If I had gone on Goodreads and read the summary, I would have seen it was something else! But I am glad that I had the wrong idea; it left me completely unprepared for the visceral, terrifying, harrowing, wondrous, and joyful physical and emotional experiences inside.

Something that does bothers me, though, is that Zan did not speak the language of the People when she returned. If she began speaking their language, perhaps people might listen to her story a little more? Of course, they might think she was in even more need of help, but the book didn't even mention the language once Zan returned home.

Huh. I don't really know where to start.

The truth is that while reading this, I wasn't even sure where Catching Fire ended and Mockingjay began. Since I picked this up right after finishing Catching Fire, they blended together into one long, kind of surreal experience. Of course, Catching Fire ended with Gale saying “There is no District 12.” But my consciousness of everything that went on in the second arena just melded right into our time in District 13. Needless to say, this has been one exhausting, traumatizing, whiplash-inducing ride for everyone involved.

After finishing, I'd say I felt...disheartened? I had, and still have, an empty kind of feeling. Katniss was torn apart again and again, forced to endure yet another trauma, never able to escape the fear and nightmares whether awake or asleep. I haven't read that much YA, but what I have read of YA adventure-type novels (particularly fantasy), there isn't much exploration of the everyday, lived experience of trauma, PTSD, or even physical injury. The characters may go through extreme situations as Katniss has, but Mockingjay is the first YA I've read that really makes this pain a significant part of the book which fundamentally impacts the main character's sense of self. Bearing witness to this makes me ache for Katniss and everyone else; it makes the book heavy in my hands; it makes it unforgettable. Katniss feels so real to me and so intimate to my soul right now, that I almost feel cheated out of seeing the rest of her life. But I can rest knowing that she and Peeta made it, and they are creating a sort of happiness (except where is Gale, I wonder?).

At some points, especially in the first half, I wasn't convinced that the plot made total sense...or that this is even how rebellions work. But I was eventually convinced, or at least cared enough about the characters to believe in the plot. Ah, this painful plot. Every time I thought I had this book figured out, every time I thought I knew where we were going and had finally escaped the worst of it, Mockingjay gave me a jolt and suddenly we were on a different, still more tragic path. I don't mean that I didn't guess what some of the plot twists and reveals would be — but the aftermath of those twists yanked me through a plot which, on the whole, affected me more than I anticipated. I saw “hijacked” Peeta coming early on, but that didn't make it any less painful. To have the finale of the trilogy be nearly devoid of genuine, romantic, and certain-minded Peeta is pretty jarring. Similarly, I could sniff hypocrisy in 13's motives from a distance — but that didn't make my jaw drop any less when Katniss shot her assassination arrow at Coin instead of Snow.

Even though I saw these moments coming, what made them so riveting was that I had no idea how we would get out of the mess and terror that the twists created. How will our beloved Katniss/Peeta duo ever be possible again, and how will he ever be the same? What on earth will happen after Katniss kills Coin?

The void of unknown that loomed after these reveals was terrifying. The answer to the first question took basically the whole book to answer, and kept my heart aching until the end. The answer to the second question came quicker, but not after a harrowing chapter of Katniss in solitary confinement. I've been with her in hospital stay after hospital stay, trauma after trauma, hallucination and confusion and morphling and violence and despair... But this late chapter emptied me and terrified me more than any other. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was late at night...but it was also extremely well written. From the moment the second bomb went off and Katniss watched Prim be set ablaze and killed, Suzanne imbued her words with a sort of desperate poetry that leapt off the page and sunk into my brain. By the time we're in solitary confinement with Katniss, I'm in a near hallucinatory state from her words and the whiplash of Prim's death and Coin's assassination. Here, Katniss has absolutely zero hope for life or future existence — and I am stuck there with her, with no peek of the outside world. I want to weep for her, but I feel frozen and empty at the same time.

And then suddenly we're out. And now we're going “home.” And the book is wrapping up. And things are changing. And there's a future. And this is not what I expected when I picked up The Hunger Games #1. And I think about little past me a few weeks ago, reading about Katniss and Peeta and everyone else for the first time, and how little I knew... How very little I knew then.

I guess the book had to end at some point, and this was probably a good place for it to happen. I don't know why, but each time one of the books in this trilogy ends, something feels off. This one felt like it ended a little too fast. Maybe it's just because my mind is still reeling from everything that just happened, and then suddenly we're done. It's a happy ending, by the time we get to the epilogue, but it's certainly not as shiny as a lot of YA books I've read. Which I appreciate. But it's also hard.

You are strong, Katniss. May you live free and happy.

This is going in my “was not expecting that” list. After coming to an abrupt and unexpected ending in The Hunger Games, I had no choice but to move swiftly to the next book. Ah, the benefits of reading popular series years after they were released! To put it simply, I was excited for Catching Fire because I thought the entirety of the book would take place during the Victory Tour. I imagined we would go with Katniss and Peeta to visit all of the other districts; we would get an inside peek at how they all work, their industries, the landscapes, what the people are like, and their relationship with the Capitol. I had a sort of anthropological curiosity about it.

But no, Catching Fire is not a travelogue of their trip round Panem. I was startled to find the Victory Tour over in a minute, and besides the fiasco in Rue's district, we didn't get much information on the other districts at all. It's interesting, because Katniss and Peeta have this newfound understanding of the other districts, at least on a superficial level. They have seen people gather, they have walked on a beach, they have gone across the whole country. Yet us readers are still pretty much left in the dark about what goes on in these places.

I think that ultimately us not coming along for most of the tour was beneficial, because our complete lack of knowledge about most of the districts mirrored Katniss's lack of real knowledge about the districts. Sure, she saw what their center squares were like, and she looked into the faces of a gathered crowd. But this is surface-level. What she really wants to know, and what I really want to know, are about the lives of these people. Are they as discontented with the Capitol as Katniss? What do they really think about the Games? Are they willing to rebel?

Our understanding of the situation in other districts doesn't come from their staged Victory Tour. No; it comes from the people we meet and the connections Katniss makes, which are woven tightly into the story as a whole. When we meet Bonnie and Twill, or accidentally see the news on the Mayor's television, or get to know Finnick and Beetee and Wiress, we begin to put the pieces together about the Districts they are from. Through these characters we get a far deeper understanding than if we simply witnessed Katniss and Peeta on the victory tour. Thus I am glad I didn't go along with them, because learning about the Districts through the characters was far more satisfying.

Oh yeah, and they go back into the arena. I most certainly didn't see that coming when I first picked up the book, but then I heard a sort-of-spoiler about it. I thought Ha! No way. Wouldn't Collins want to explore them in a different situation?

But the hints of the Quarter Quell were concerning. And then the yellow envelope came. If I hadn't heard the half-spoiler, my mouth would have dropped open. Maybe everyone else saw this coming. Alas, since the seed had been planted in my mind, I just thought, “Oh, wow, well, okay. Here we go again.”

It was more of my favorite: Katniss in the (simulated) wilderness, us discovering with her how this environment works, what in it will save her and what in it might kill her. Yet it had a whole other dimension, a different flavor, and different stakes. Finnick really grew on me. I hoped and hoped there would be a rebellion starting from within the arena (the only way it seemed both Peeta and Katniss could come out of this alive), but we're still too close to the events to understand how they will affect the greater whole. Everything is still so immediate. And then the book ends.

And yes, I was fooled again! You'd think I would have learned by now that the Hunger Games trilogy on Kindle does not end at 100%, because there is a preview of the next book to follow it. But no! I thought I had a whole 8% left!

“Katniss, there is no District Twelve.” THE END.

SUZANNE!!

4.5 Stars
I didn't even mean to read this book. Not now, anyway. I picked it up because I was watching author tube videos about point of view, to try to figure out if I wanted to write my own book in first or third person. I learned that the Hunger Games is written in first person present tense — how unusual. I couldn't remember another book like that, and I was curious what it felt like, what the rhythm was. Would it be right for mine? So I began.

The writing isn't the kind I usually gush over. There aren't long paragraphs of description, or metaphors every other sentence. It's brief, rough, almost a little choppy. But it works, because everything I read was Katniss and her thoughts. Through her mind, through her eyes, in her past and in her present. Right there in every moment. There aren't gaps in time, either, because it wouldn't make sense for us not to know what she does every single day. But I also lost track of time; the flow of nights and days, especially while she was in the arena, felt almost as endless and discombobulating as they might have to her.

Needless to say, first person present tense was definitely the right way to go for this book. I am trying to imagine it in past tense, but it doesn't work — even though we know she must survive, we don't know know. If it were written in past tense, there would be a sense of safety to it that would take away from the immediate danger of the Hunger Games. If she spoke in past tense, part of our minds might already be out of the Hunger Games, knowing she must have won. And, it only makes sense to tell such a harrowing adventure in present tense. I cannot imagine her wanting to tell it in such detail over again.

From the moment Katniss volunteers until she returns back to the Seam, she loses parts of herself, forgets who she is, struggles to understand her identity. In her words, “Who I am and who I am not.” Everything she was put through tested her at the most fundamental level, but there were always layers of meaning. She could not think only of her survival, but also of her family back home, of the Gamemakers, of the Capitol, of the audience, of the entertainment factor.

(It only struck me nearing the end of the book that the Hunger Games is actually reality T.V. It seemed so far away and too evil to fit into a category we already have, but it does. That's exactly what it is. I am sure there are Gamemakers in real reality T.V., too, though hopefully far less sadistic.)

But as Katniss is struggling with her identity, we have gotten to know her intimately. We know what the Capitol doesn't. I feel like she trusts me, to be sharing her innermost thoughts and most private moments. Yet at the same time, I myself disappear into her consciousness. We blend together into one, one character who is completely in the present moment, and completely in danger. The cadence of first person present and Katniss's voice seeped into my brain.

For the two nights I read it before bed, my dreams were just a continuation or slightly distorted replay of what I had just experienced in the book. Almost like the replays that the Capitol forces them to watch. I have been on edge, a first-person present narrative running through my head. Last night, I was at the Cornucopia, gold and gleaming in the arid landscape. I was with Peta. Besides us, only Cato was left. I was retracing my steps to the feast, but this time there was a choice to be made about what I was going to pick up. A loaf of bread, some feet from the golden horn, lay there on the cracked ground. This loaf of bread was crucial. What did I have to do to save Peeta?

Spoilers ahead as I mull over the ending

Speaking of Peeta, I didn't realize how much of a romance this would be. Or... a feign of one. I felt as played as the audience, as saddened as Peeta, when Katniss admitted that a lot of her motivation for acting so romantically was for the Games, for their survival. But even then, she wanted to ensure his survival. That is real. The boy with the bread. I know she cares about him deeply. Peeta, Peeta. He is so sweet, remaining so seemingly genuine even in his darkest moments. I worry for him, now.

My kindle showed me I was about 80% of the way through the book. I expected many more pages of them coming home, of Katniss reuniting with her family, of her seeing Gale, of her and Peeta alone. Of their houses in the circle, of continued paranoia about the Capitol and their berry rebellion.
But, no. I clicked page next and what do you know, the book is over. The next 20% is a preview of Catching Fire.

I wasn't prepared for that, but it makes sense. Dragging out the homecoming wasn't necessary, and the end made for much more of an impact and left enough up in the air ending where it did.

I purposefully delayed finishing this book for over a month because I could hardly stand it to be over. I had to read many chapters over and over again, the first time my heart racing, sweating. The second time to really understand what was going on, after calming down a little. The third time to indulge myself and enjoy the dialogue, descriptions, and pace anew. Reading this book was one of the most physiological reading experiences I've had. Funny, since I have read it and watched the movies multiple times. It's clear a book really speaks to my soul when it is still riveting and rapturous even when I know the end.