Mockingjay: Our mixed opinions

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

OK, HUNGER GAMES fans, you’ve been waiting a year for this book, and the last thing you want is some @#$% reviewer spoiling the plot. So, I will do my best to give my impressions of Mockingjay with as few spoilers as possible.

When a series becomes this popular and sparks this much speculation among readers, the author’s task is extremely difficult. How to surprise a fanbase, when that fanbase has spent many months trying to guess what will happen in the final installment (and almost certainly guessed right on a few counts)? Yet Suzanne Collins succeeds admirably. There are plenty of twists in Mockingjay that I simply never saw coming, and there are other aspects of the plot that I partially guessed but that didn’t play out quite the way I thought they would.

It’s no surprise that this book sees Katniss taking a larger part in the rebellion against the Capitol. The reality of this conflict is more complicated than it looks at first sight, though, and even among Katniss’s proclaimed allies, not everyone is looking out for her best interests. Also expected, and delivered, is a resolution to the Katniss/Gale/Peeta love triangle. Collins avoids cliche in this resolution and doesn’t use the plot shortcuts you might expect. I never really took a side in the Gale vs. Peeta wars, but I think Katniss made her decision for the right reasons, and I am content with this choice.

I enjoyed Mockingjay more than I did Catching Fire, but not as much as I did The Hunger Games. I think this is mainly because the scope of the plot grows broader here while we still see events through only one point of view. Katniss can’t be everywhere at once, and this war is much bigger than the Hunger Games, and so there are several major plot points that she — and by extension the reader — only hears about secondhand.

When Katniss is in the thick of things, though, the plot is as exciting as anyone could wish, and with almost all of her loved ones on or near the front lines, the stakes are high and personal. Katniss has a major role to play, and if you know Katniss Everdeen, you can guess it isn’t quite the role that others have mapped out for her!

Like the previous books in this series, Mockingjay works on the level of action/adventure and on the level of social commentary. Here, Collins gives us a chilling look at war, propaganda, and collateral damage. If you’ve enjoyed this series so far, you will almost certainly find Mockingjay a worthy conclusion. If you haven’t tried this series yet, you’re missing out!

~Kelly Lasiter

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins has certainly been one of the most anticipated titles this year, bringing to a close the trilogy that began with The Hunger Games and continued with Catching Fire. The Hunger Games was a captivating, compelling read — one of my favorite reads that year — and Catching Fire was close to it in quality; though different in pace and tone, it maintained a strong sense of character and character growth. So does Collins manage to recapture the fire in Mockingjay? To be honest, it’s a bit mixed.

In book one, the games are, well, the games (I’ll assume you already know what the Hunger Games are). In book two, the games broaden, though by the end we’re back in the literal games via the Quarter Quell. In Mockingjay, the “games” have broadened once more, becoming all-out war between the districts, led by District 13, and the Capitol. Katniss is the districts’ sometimes reluctant symbol of resistance, a symbol “employed” by District 13 via propaganda shoots, cameras that follow her around, scripted “rebel” lines, etc. The parallels between the preparation and execution of the war and Katniss’ earlier experiences with the games are drawn clearly for the reader (at times perhaps too much so — this was the first of the books where I felt the author was aiming clearly at a YA audience that might need a bit more help). Where she trained for the arena, she now trains as a soldier; where she was primped and made up for the audience of the games for a better show, she’s now primped and made up for the audience to better manipulate them into resisting. Collins does a good job making these parallels clear, but also showing Katniss’ reluctant acceptance of them while she’s also often repulsed by them. She also does a good job at the obvious — war is not in fact a game — and so, like its predecessors Mockingjay is filled with deaths, lots of them and some quite powerful. The war scenes we see will as well seem disturbingly familiar, many of them akin to terrorism or scenes from Iraq: the pods as IEDs, human shields, civilian casualties, etc.

Where Collins runs into some trouble is toward the end of the book when the “games” aspect becomes a bit too literal and the resistance has to run a gauntlet of killer “pods” in the city streets a la the creative death-dealing in the arenas. This feels a bit too contrived, a bit too much been-there-done-that, and trivializes the war aspect a little. The pods also don’t seem to make much logistical sense and seem somewhat random. Actually, the entire logistical aspect is the weakest part of the novel. The exterior world-building, beyond the narrow focus on the arenas, has always been thin, but one could ignore it in the earlier works. Here, though, with the plot being painted across all the districts and then in the entire city of the Capitol, we needed a clearer, more concrete, more full vision of how the world works. We get the war in a few scenes but mostly as snippets and it becomes a shock toward the end when the results are simply declared and then again when one realizes just how far it’s gone (vague, I know, but I don’t want to ruin plot).

The plot also has some pacing issues, some parts flying along and others stuttering through: the opening is a bit slow, as are some of the training scenes, and a scene involving the bombing of District 13 is both slow and strangely disconnected, and also calls up some basic questions of logistics. There are a few other plot points I had issues with, but they involve some spoilers so won’t go into them.

Character is a bit more tricky than plot in this one. Katniss’ character has always carried the reader through via her strength, her active role and sharply compelling voice. In Mockingjay, however, she’s much more passive as she’s forced, often reluctantly but eventually willingly, into being a propaganda tool by District 13’s President Coin. We get flashes of her vibrant will as she defies orders at various times, but mostly she’s reacting to people and events and within a relatively constrained perimeter. She’s also in much more confused waters than the “kill or be killed” and “stay alive” world of the arena. It isn’t quite clear whom to trust, politics is inherently shadowy, she’s both the target and tool of propaganda, it’s unclear to whom or to what principles to remain loyal to, it’s unclear as to what methods are justifiable: can one use the methods of one’s enemies without being the same as them?

This passivity and confusion is essential to the book. In fact, I’d say it’s the major point, but it makes for a read that is less satisfactory on the surface level. Mockingjay is a different kind of book, and a deeper book, but that costs the book a bit in that it loses that thrill-ride aspect of the first two. Personally, I like that she’s done something different, but some readers may bemoan the edge-of-the-seat, always-driving-forward, kick-ass-heroine aspects of the first two books.

Beyond Katniss, the other characters vary in depth and quality. Gale becomes a symbol of the “win at all costs” mentality, while Peeta, for complex reasons, argues for a ceasefire to spare lives. Gale suffers a bit from one-dimensionality, but Peeta is nicely complex and shaded, as is Katniss’ former mentor Haymitch. Prim, Katniss’ sister, isn’t on stage much but when she is she dominates in a quietly forceful and often poignant fashion.

This trilogy has always had a darker, more realistic bent. Too often we see the young, plucky hero (male or female) overcome all odds and defeat the bad guys/dark lord/dystopian leaders with only a single loss or two, required for emotional effect. Collins shows us how much that is childish wishful thinking. Kat doesn’t get to make all the choices here; she suffers more than a single loss or two, as do those around her; her decisions cause others pain; and the band of good guys she’s surrounded by (the fellowship, if you will) is a lot more grey than white. The muddiness of the world and war logistics is a major weakness in Mockingjay and means this conclusion isn’t as good as the first two books in some ways, but the other reasons the book doesn’t “satisfy” are essential to its realistic vision of people and the world as it is, which make Mockingjay a powerful and fitting conclusion.

~Bill Capossere

Mockingjay is the third and final installment in Suzanne Collins’ wonderfully human thriller THE HUNGER GAMES. While the series is targeted at young adults, I found them all to be terrific stories. They read fast, they’re full of action, and thematically the books are more ‘adult’ than they are ‘young’.

Normally, the conclusion to a series is not the highlight, but that might just be the case with Mockingjay. This is the most adult of the three books, carrying heavy themes of teenage angst, love, and deep emotional turmoil. The root of the plot revolves around Katniss Everdeen (codename “Mockingjay”), who unwittingly ignites a cult of personality around which a rebellion burns. The heavy themes of this dystopic world and the brewing rebellion are energetic and violent and oftentimes emotionally raw.

There are numerous battle scenes which are vividly written and abrupt. There is only the barest of nods to a “Hollywood ending,” so squeemish and emotional readers should beware. Not all of the major characters survive.

Collins does a terrific job of fleshing out her characters. Key characters have great impact on the drama despite having little interaction at the forefront of the story.

I can’t say enough good things about this book — it’s my favorite of the series. I’d highly recommend a shared reading experience for parents and their young adults.

~Jason Golomb

I was disappointed in this final entry in the HUNGER GAMES trilogy. Katniss no longer seems to be as interesting a character as she was, and, indeed, sometimes seems to be in the way of those who want to accomplish big things in her world. This is a trilogy that doesn’t fulfill the promise of its first book.

~Terry Weyna

I am of the HARRY POTTER generation, so of course THE HUNGER GAMES hit me like it hit the rest of my demographic: square in the imagination. Although I adored the first two installments in this trilogy, Mockingjay left me feeling betrayed, let down, and ultimately dejected.

It seemed to me that this last installment in the trilogy was poor on every front. I felt that not only did the characters cease to be dynamic entities, the setting lost its unique qualities and the plot left everything to be desired. I think all of my problems with Mockingjay stem from the style being completely different. It felt choppier, less robust and much less well-thought-out than the prior novels.

What bothered me the most was the loss of the great characters. Though some of the supporting people stay dynamic and life-like, Katniss herself becomes less. It’s not that she becomes a shadow of herself in any meaningful way, but she becomes totally two dimensional, and stops being a character and more of a tool to advance the plot along when need-be.

Perhaps I, as a woman of about the same age, placed too much pressure on the Katniss character to be the strong leading character I wanted to see — but she only started disappointing me as a reader when she stopped being a character and started being a plot point in a war book.

~Skye Walker