Mockingjay

Yes, please, suck the life out of a decent book series and ramble for close to 400 pages. That's exactly what I want to read in my free time.

There were a few things that resembled what I originally liked about the series. There were some great emotional moments. Haymitch, who is officially my favorite character, was at his acidic yet fatherly best. Other than that, though, there was nothing enjoyable about this book. The sense of urgency and peril from the previous books was gone because the snappy pacing was replaced with aimless mood swings. The short, curt sentences which worked great for a quick moving, straightforward story line, became awkward under the weight of Katniss' angst and the roundabout political machinations of the people around her.

There's no real driving motivation, no focus. The rebellion is something that's separate from Katniss, that she has no control over and questions the morality of, and her personal goal of killing Snow seems distant for the fact that, unlike with Catching Fire, the two of them have no relationship or contact. Not to mention, it becomes clear as the story goes that its not going to happen, and even if it did, thanks to Katniss' refusal to accept her own innate moral ambiguity, it would not be satisfying.

Katniss is a shell of the character she once was. She sees the world for the most part through a fog, and as such, so does the reader. Time and actions pass in paragraphs full of fuzzy descriptions and Katniss' own self hatred. In the last fifty pages or so there were countless moments where I thought, “Ok, you can end it now,” where there might have been something quick and clever about the end of Katniss' bleak and meandering story, but it kept going. And honestly, she should've died after she killed Coin. It would have made her purpose in the story much more clear, and things could've been wrapped up in an epilogue from someone else's point of view, which I was kind of craving the whole time.

All this makes it sound like I care a lot more about how bad this was, but I really don't. That was the big problem, Mockingjay invoked very little emotion or passion or interest. I felt the way Katniss felt through most the story - tired. I could probably write a couple more paragraphs of how the idea of District 13 surviving so long completely independently is kind of ridiculous, and also where the fuck is the rest of the world, in what universe does a civil war break out and other nations don't try to get involved? But it's really not worth the spoons.

Also. I'm getting really bored with this heteronormative, relationship and baby focused story telling, where there is no conclusion unless we know who the main character married, that their legacy or imprint on the world doesn't count unless its in the form of biological offspring. Nevermind the fact that in this case it felt totally slapped on, because it was apparently so important that we know that despite a whole book of barely being able to look at each other, eventually they figured it out and got with the babymaking, even if it means summing it up in one or two paragraphs. Ugh.

So. Yeah. This was extremely disappointing. The main thing that was getting me through was imagining Haymitch played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (I like Woody Harrelson, don't get me wrong, but what the fuck is with that hair?). On the plus side, this story will probably work a lot better as a movie, unless they decide to include a voice over of Katniss' whining during the battle scenes.