Mockingjay

In this volume, everything is focused on the implementation of Katniss's plan to kill President Snow. For this purpose, she slowly walks to the Capitol with her friends (who volunteered) to do this. Along the way, they encounter a number of unpleasant surprises, such as a mined Capitol city streets. Several people die, so at the end Katniss decides to go alone with her friend Gale. In the end she kills President Alma Coin, who turns out to be worse than Snow. Overall, there are a lot of new details, Gale's betrayal, a new president, and an adventure with adrenaline. Finnick dies, which I'm not happy about. Peeta hates Katniss. Katniss's sister dies, whom I wanted to protect - Unfortunately...

Katniss gets some cool arrows and a bow, which is great. You can see the unity of the book characters in the fight for freedom. I like the book and everyone should read it. I also recommend the movie, which is awesome. I will always be a fan of the movie, or rather all parts.

Sadly, the finale is a let-down given the high standards of the first two; too high apparently.

What I liked about: the plot. I still love the way Suzanne Collins manages to surprise me with how the plot twists and turns, and how I usually didn't expect the way things turn out. So that's a plus. The pacing is still smooth and it's easy to read the book and keep wanting to read more.

I took off one star for how the plot was explained - like watching the news. Major events were reported rather than played out. Something's supposed to happen, then it happened, and we're given a summary. Not just once, but the whole story's like that from the midpoint.

Another star I took off for how the main characters lost themselves. Katniss, Peeta, Gale... even Haymitch seemed shallow. Katniss was just swept along in the story. It's like she became part of the sidelines and we're just a news reader chronicling what happened to her. And character deaths - some died so trivially - just a line or two and it's over.

I wonder if that's the actual message of the book - about how war just sweeps everyone along and about how in the end, no one really wins. Still, reading it just wasn't as gripping as the first two. The ending was a good, clean wrap-up though, although more could've been said on Peeta instead of just Katniss.

This was definitely my favorite of the series. I'm no fan of young adult fiction, so a small part of me dies by admitting this, but this is one of the best representations of how unglamorous and brutal revolutions can be. There's no clear right and wrong and the war is won not in the streets, but through the media. The plot meanders at times and the end falls apart completely. But it's ok, cause the meat of this book is the first half when the never-quite-made-points in the first 2 books about media culture come to fruition.

Peeta is just as creepy as ever, but it's intentional this time and he's gone for long portions of the book, so it's ok.

I'm not sure how much I liked this one, even reflecting on it months later. There was a lot that I liked: the depiction of the PTSD of the Games' survivors, and the different ways that it manifested themselves. The fact that Collins was willing to present the Resistance as nearly as bad as Snow and the Capitol. The action scenes, which again are expertly and entertainingly written.

At the same time, I hate the love triangle that sprang up, especially since I saw Katniss and Gale's relationship as filial, rather than romantic, in the first book. I hate that Katniss becomes little more than a figurehead, a bauble for the revolution - exactly what Snow had wanted her to be for the Capitol. She escapes that by the end, but the fact that she's reduced to that was difficult to read.

Still, it's a strong book, and a good, logical end to the series.

So this wasn't my favorite. I do, however, like the ending of the trilogy with respect to the plot arc across the books. Jacob pointed out that Collins, like Rowling in the later Harry Potter books, excels at writing with the voice of a sullen teenager. That's a great quality in a YA writer, obviously, but it left me spending a lot of this book waiting for Katniss to...grow up. And then she did, just a little too quickly in a somewhat rushed denouement. Still, I'd recommend the series to anyone looking to become obsessed with the outcomes in a fictional world for a few days/weeks, or wanting to dive right into some pop culture without regretting it later.

This book illustrates the toll war can have on people, especially when governments lose site of caring for people. Not just their own, but others. It's so easy to take an us vs them perspective and see the citizens as a reflection of the government that rules them.

This is a dark book. I didn't find the story all that enjoyable because of how horrible the events are. It does show in the end that fighting for what you believe is super hard. Especially when you've been lied to for a long time or are only given certain truths in certain light.

I'm not sure I'll come back to this one, but it did get me thinking.

I really enjoyed this last book in the series. Watching Katniss deal with the aftermath of the events in the books was interesting and sad and realistic. I have heard comments that the writing in this book feels so different from the first two that some readers didn't enjoy it as much. I did not feel this as much as others because I think Katniss is a different person from how she first started and so the stylistic change made sense to me.

The first installment of the trilogy was the strongest. Mockingjay suffers from lack of good pacing and organization, and is inevitably the weakest installment ofthe trilogy. By the end of all the seemingly endless pain and misery, I was just as tired as the characters. Whole chunks of soldiering around in District 13 could have been cut without affecting the story. I was a big fan of the President Snow and Katniss dynamic, Katniss' mental deterioration, and Peeta's role in this book. Beyond that, the story becomes convoluted by unnecessary characters when it stagnates in District 13. Not a bad ending, but I'm glad it ended. At least I feel the characters earned their ending, which is more than I can say about some other bestsellers. The Hunger Games is fine as a trilogy, but the overall story could have been tighter and more polished as one novel.

I loved the way I finally caught on to some of the things Collins was doing besides the mirroring of Peta & Gale. Snow & Prim and Kat & Buttercup. I just wish there had been a little more in the way of confirmation after the assassination. The bottom line, though, is that I really want to see what Collins does next.

It's been four to five years since I last read any of The Hunger Games books and they're still just as good.
I truly love this series and it's probably one of the only YA series where I actually ball my eyes out every time I read them.
This book was never my favourite but I still love it and I think it was a fitting finale to this series.
These books are just so good!

This is the third and final book of the Hunger Games trilogy. Katniss Everdeen has managed to survive both of the Hunger Games, but it is still not over. Now, Katniss must not only fight for herself and family, but she must lead an entire army to take on the Capitol since she has been named the “Mockingjay” – a genetic cross between a mockingbird and blue jay. This book is written in the first and present tense.


This book can very intense as we watch young teens frequently experience hard things like death and war. It can be inspiring at times, too, as we see a young female protagonist spearhead an entire revolution. The book is action-packed and may certainly appeal to boys. However, there is a bit of romance in the book (which at times feels forced), and it may be off-putting, especially with the intensity of war and destruction going around. This book is a good introduction to the utopian fantasy genre.

I honestly don't know what to put here. I think that's a compliment, hope it is anyway. I spent most of this novel leaning forward, as if that would get me to the end quicker. I don't know how many times I said, “She's [Collins] isn't really doing that...” when it was very clear she was.

Yet the book as a whole (even most of the time I was reading it) I felt a mixture of pleasure and disappointment. I really don't think that Collins could've done better, I don't think there was any way to stick the landing. The setup over the first two novels created expectations that were too high – a plot that couldn't be wrapped up in just one book (but I don't think 2 would've done it either, then she would've had to resort to filler, I think).

So let me put it this way...did we get honest character growth/development? Yup.
Did we get to spend more time with people we've grown to like? Yup.
Did we see man's cruelty to man clearly displayed? Yup.
Did we get a conclusion (however unsatisfying or sad) to every storyline? Yup.

Pretty much what we would want to see from a conclusion. Was it the ending that I wanted? No. Was it the ending that I feared we'd get? Thankfully, no. Can't complain about that.

The most redeeming thing about this series (which, please don't get me wrong, I loved) is the commentary on the relations between media, government actions (military and otherwise) and entertainment/distraction of the masses. I don't think Collins said anything new, but she said it pretty darn effectively. And no one needs to think about these things more than the series' target demographic.

I found the conclusion to the Hunger Games trilogy to be a grand disappointment. Gone is the strong, resourceful Katniss. She is replaced wholly by a whiney, self-indulgent teenager. That would have been fine at some point of the story arc, but not after all the life changing experiences she has been through. The deaths and violence often felt unnecessary, like they were just thrown in there to make the story more dark and grim. They didn't seem to.really serve much more of a purpose. Particularly the deaths of Finnick and Prim. Both of these felt like deaths thrown in there just to manipulate the reader.

Finally, the end left a really bad taste in my mouth. First off, the entire series starts off with the goal to protect Prim, and Collins doesn't even give that to Katniss. Second, I really didn't get the feeling at the end that the world was any better off than it was at the beginning. All in all, I don't plan to go back to this series again and am glad that I used the library.

2.75

I have to be total honest, this was lackluster. The first two books were entertaining and intriguing despite the dull writing, i was able to push through and have a nice time. This was terrible, despite the message it was trying to send. It took me so long to get through this that i settled on just skimming through the summary at the end

This is such an emotionally draining book to read at 5 AM. Everyone is either dead or irretrievably broken. No one is unscathed well probably except Plutarch Heavensbee, come to think of it. I just feel so hollow and spent after reading it. Mostly because of how messed up the world is, how everyone is just a pawn in the political machinations of those in power throughout the whole book that I'm left wondering about the point of it all. Also, the fact that Peeta will never be the same again was extremely upsetting. I think I'm going to be depressed for awhile.