Mockingjay

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.