Novel Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

            So here it is: The finale. The end. The very last post I may ever write about Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games.

            My review of Mockingjay.

            Well. Let’s clear up some stuff first. Number One—the first HG book was awful. Number Two—the second HG book wasn’t much better. Number Three—these books offer no hope that humanity will change, that there is a force of good that can overcome the evil of carnality and bring us to a place of peace and goodness. Mockingjay was no different.

            While some character(s) advanced a little (Finnick, by name), the writing quality really didn’t. Katniss is still the flipping-back-and-forth girl we’ve seen since book one. She doesn’t change at all. AT ALL. Hasn’t changed in three books! I detect no growth here, in the finale, and I didn’t think there would be any, anyway. And while Peeta had a more determined air about him, he was still soppy and bent on keeping Katniss alive at all costs. Granted, he loves her, but really? You’re going to kill yourself to keep her alive, Peeta? Stupid, if you ask me. Why not fight for her, BY HER SIDE, until the end creeps up on you? Whenever that may be? And Gale? That moment when he was about to cry really made me . . . annoyed.

            And the plot? While near the ending the twists became clear, the fulfillment of answers and the reveal were nonexistent. We know next to nothing about Coin’s full plan and how she enacted it, who she got to be with her, and why she wanted Katniss alive even after the former thought the latter was dead. (Oh, wait. Spoiler alert.) On that Katniss note, why did she not kill the Mockingjay in her sleep? With an overdose of morphling? Would have been so easy. But no. Nothing like that. Bah. Major holes riddled the book, like how Katniss and Finnick “figured out” the Capitol was set up like the arena, which was a scene not entirely clear in wording or in action anyway. Oh, and the whole meeting-of-former-tributes near the end about enacting one last Hunger Games? Random, and quite frankly unneeded. And the fact that Katniss, who was a confessed hater of the Capitol and their Games, said “Yes do it?” . . . what? Again I say, honestly?

            Oh, and that’s another thing. Hate. This book’s energy is hate. The plot’s driver is hate. The entire reason Katniss exists is her HATRED of the Capitol. That’s why she does what she does, is because of hatred! Even close to the end of the book, there, she’s devising ways to kill herself. She loses her hatred, and therefore her reason for being flies out the window, so she gives up. And the fact that she “lets” Peeta revive her? Don’t get me wrong, I always knew she would end up with him (sorry, spoiler alert), but I didn’t think their final reunion would be so . . . not cheesy, but random. There should have been more leading up to it. A talk, for instance. In which there is both healing and baring of souls and uniting of hearts. Instead, they have sex. How shallow.

            And don’t get me started on the epilogue. Sure, we see Katniss’s and Peeta’s kids, their finality in marrying and stuff, but what of Panem? What of Gale? What of Haymitch and District 12 and how the country really turned out? We. Get. NOTHING.

            The entire Hunger Games series presents nothing for a world full of hatred already. The point that  brutality can only be beaten by brutality is not one a hopeless world needs to hear. Violence cannot quell the human corruption called carnality. Only Jesus can soothe our wounds and hurts and bring us into a fullness we can only imagine without Him. The Hunger Games presents us with a perfect picture of how hopeless our world truly is, and how desperately it is crying out for a Savior.

            Luckily, we’ve already been given one.

            Speaking of giving, I give Mockingjay Two flipped pages out of Ten. Why two? Because we didn’t go into the arena again.