Mockingjay

I guess there are no real spoilers in this but it certainly could give one expectations so I'm marking this as having spoilers.

I was hesitant after the second book, which I enjoyed but which seemed to lean a bit heavily on the conventions of the first. Also, the second and the third books are far more dark and violent than the first. As I approached the ending of Mockingjay, I became more and more curious (not just as an invested reader, but as a creative person, someone who is interested in telling stories ... wow, that all sounds silly) about how Collins was going to end the trilogy. With everything that had happened, it would take a lot to justify the whole thing.

She very, very much did it.

I'm very fascinated by this whole series being aimed at young adults, but I think there was a lot that happened in this series, a lot was said, and it ended exactly how it had to. With everything that had happened, it couldn't be a happy ending, but it would be far too easy to end the series with a simple, tragic ending. I thought she might go for a meaningless end, by simply killing Katniss and maybe everybody else. Just because of all of the preceding events. It might have been interesting, and I was preparing myself for something like that. I was not prepared for what actually happened and I'm glad, because it was perfect and not obvious.

The way Collins wrapped up this series validated everything that happened in it without trivializing any of it, and it proved that she knew what she was doing. I love Harry Potter (and yes, I know they're very different things), and I liked how Rowling ended that series but she left a lot of things that didn't set quite right. This ending seemed to fit together perfectly, partially because it had little to tie up. There was some deus ex machina, some stuff that might have seemed contrived, if there weren't precedent for it throughout the series. And all of this has elevated this series to one of my favorites of all time. We'll see if I'm just coming down from the experience of the series, or if this opinion endures. But I loved it.