Rambling Thoughts: "Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins

As with my The Hunger Games and Catching Fire posts, this originally appeared on The Book Club Forum and states  my thoughts on Mockingjay, the third and final book in The Hunger Games trilogy.  This was written as soon as I finished the book. 

So, I finished Mockingjay. I'll be honest, I was kinda pumped for it. I was told a lot of the issues I had with the previous book, Catching Fire would be dealt with and the thought that maybe we'd finally get some good action as well as an in depth look at this dystopia kept me going.

I'll be honest, for all I've said about the Hunger Games trilogy I think the setting is pretty good. I like me some dystopian future and I think the general vagueness helps the general setting. On top of that it's something I can honestly believe happening and taking place, with its elements of politics and science fiction. From the very start I've always imagined it to be kinda like the film Zardoz in some strange way. To some this would be a down side, but I really enjoyed Zardoz and imagining a giant floating head instead of the hoverplanes makes me chuckle.

But this world is completely squandered. Collins has the framework of a brilliant future and uses it to tell a pretty crappy story. In Mockingjay we get have the rebellion against the Capitol finally happen. This is great. We should see the war, the battles, the effect it has on the people, the Districts, the toll it takes on the main characters, the Capitol showing fear as everything they have held for so long crumbles around them.

Do we get this? No, we just get Katniss complaining and being a pawn in everyone's schemes. This being a pawn would be fine if she we coherent and consistent, but she doesn't seem to have any particular character. Her decisions often make little sense, and that's only when she is making decisions, which is still pretty rare. She's a chore to follow as a protagonist, caring more about silly things rather than things that actually matter (this should read as "All she cares about is the boys").

I could never tell you what the actual plot of the book is. There's a revolution going on, but the book has so little to do with the revolution. Most of the revolution is over by the time Katniss starts doing anything in particular and the final assault on the Capitol is dealt with so quickly it may as well not even be in there.

We also have the character deaths. Why are they there if Collins is never going to focus on them? Rue's death in the first book help so much more weight than any death in this book. People die quickly, a sentence or two is focussed on them, and then the book continues from there. Even when really important characters die it's barely focussed upon.

The one that irritated me the most was when Prim died as basically no time was spent on that and you'd have thought that this would be a big thing that they really cared about. But it doesn't particularly matter, apparently, even though it should shake Katniss to her very core. Sure, you could interpret some of the later parts as her being distraught because of what happened, but it never really felt that way to me.

Oh, and don't get me started on how rushed that ending was. It just... it just pisses me off that much.

But this is something I've been saving up from when I read this part of the book. I've bookmarked it.

"But I don't know what to tell him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you."

At no point throughout the books has Katniss ever shown that she is haunted by killing that first person. She shot them without thinking and only mentioned later "Oh, my, I appear to have killed someone. How about that, eh? Oh well, anyway..." I mean, did Suzanne Collins even check to see if she even mentioned anything about this in previous books? This is why Katniss is such a confusing, convoluted mess of a character. She has no character and seems to be purely built out of what Collins was thinking of putting in at the time.

I really had to force my way through this book. I pushed my way through, hoping for something good to happen but nothing happened. I was excited for the action near the end, but didn't get it. I wanted something from this book, but didn't get anything. I have left this trilogy feeling pretty damn annoyed. I don't understand why people love these books so much or think they are so great. There is so much wrong with them, from a story telling perspective, a characterisation perspective or even from the actual structure of the writing (which I've decided to not comment because I don't want to go into that level of pedantry).

This is all such a shame. I was so hopeful when I started this series. I loved the start of the first book and thought the writing was excellent, but everything just fell apart from then onwards. I know people enjoy these books, but I find it hard to understand why, especially when there are so many better written books out there that haven't received the same amount of hype. Maybe it's my own loss, who knows, but I know for certain that I won't pick up anything else Suzanne Collins writes. Though I might watch those episodes of Clarissa Explains It All that she wrote on. That was a good show...

Rambling Thoughts: "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins

As with my The Hunger Games post, this originally appeared on The Book Club Forum and states  my thoughts on Catching Fire, the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy.  This was written as soon as I finished the book. 

So, I just finished Catching Fire and do you know what I did when I finished it? I threw the book away. Not in a bin, but I literally threw the book away. I tossed it aside because that book was not at all to my liking. Seriously, I was bored throughout the majority of the book, but forced myself through it because I have already got the third book and I have got this far, so I may as well continue.

So, what were my issues with the book? Well, there’s a few things. Content-wise I found the book bland and dull. I spent the first two thirds of the book guessing most of the twists the books tried to set up, but they were all so obvious, and when the twist at the end of the second third came along I had already guessed it nearly 100 pages ago.

Things did pick up by the last third, but that didn’t help too much. The dynamic of having all of the characters did make things a lot more interesting, but it didn’t help too well as I definitely think Collins has a big issue with the book’s pacing. I noticed the book was rapidly coming to a close and nothing had exactly happened.

The semi-love triangle business near the start irritated me to no end and made me think Katniss was now more concerned with what the boys will be thinking. The boys are both so bland that it’s hard to care about any of them.

Oh, and I have absolutely no idea why the Capitol would put someone who causes the rumblings of revolution is the public eye so consistently. I could understand if they did it with strict regulations and complete and utter control, but they don't. How the Capitol became this powerful I will never know as they make some of the worst decisions to control their populous.

But what irked me the most about this book has to be what happened to Katniss. Oh, Katniss, you were, for the most part, a strong female lead. What happened to you?

Throughout the entire book Katniss doesn’t do anything for herself. As I said, she constantly seemed to be concerned with what the guy’s thought of her. On top of that, she doesn’t actually make any decisions, just has everyone do everything for her. I feel this may have been thematic, that she is a pawn in everyone else’s fight, but it came across as a sight-seeing tour. We weren’t following what the character is doing, just being shown what they see.

I really feel that Collins messed up big time with this book. It was dull and made me lament for the death of characterisation. Things happened, but there was no emotional weight to it. In my previous post you will notice I asked a lot of questions. Well this time I haven’t asked any non-rhetorical questions because there’s nothing to ask. It all felt like it was going through motions rather than telling the deep, insightful story it thinks it is telling.

I really hope Mockingjay does something different, because the familiarity of the last third of the book left me irritated. Give me something to care about and I might enjoy the last book, because, as you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy Catching Fire at all.

Rambling Thoughts: "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

This was originally written as a post on The Book Club Forum, simply to go through my thoughts on the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy. This was written when I was about 7 chapters into the second book, Catching Fire, whilst tired and without any regard for structure. There are big spoilers for the book, too. If you have any answers for my randomly placed questions then please comment and let me know what you thought.

Can't help but say I was kind of underwhelmed by The Hunger Games. I enjoyed the stuff at the beginning. The first chapter made me fall in love with the book with how I came to understand the entire world within such a short period of time, and as it went on I was enjoying myself. I have to admit I was starting to get a bit bored with how everything was dragging out before the actual Hunger Games but I knew I'd get Battle Royale-esque escapades coming up.

And then the Hunger Games started and I just found everything a bit dull. Everything happened far too quickly, with too much bad stuff happening to Katniss within a few chapters. It started getting ridiculous the amount of times she had stuff flying at her.

It seemed that Collins tried getting all of the horrible things out of the way to build up a bland (possible) romance with some bland guy, creating a bland love triangle which appears out of place, especially at the beginning of Catching Fire. The love stuff is just so out of place, in my eyes, and ruins the strong character of Katniss and the pacing of the book. But Collins seems to have some issue with pacing, going from super speedy to boringly.

Regardless, I did kind of enjoy it, but I found it so dull at times. I was constantly wishing for things to happen.

One of the things I think that could have been improved is a bit more focus on the action. I didn't really feel the tension as most of the time she was on her own. Keep more people alive, have more encounters, increase the dread. Instead I was just thinking "Yeah, she'll be fine!" which, in a book like this, should not be what I am thinking. I should be wanting her to be fine against all odds. Instead, she has fire thrown at her and is poisoned but comes out all OK!

The lack of threat could have been due to the fact that we didn't spend much time with other characters. Cato never seemed to be enough of a threat, just kind of there looking for her and not doing much. Thresh was nothing, Foxface had a couple of cameos, the Careers... existed, I guess, and everyone else didn't matter. Deaths had no real impact. This, of course, comes from the fact that the book is written in first person, which meant Katniss couldn’t see everything else. But if maybe we heard about what awful things happened then maybe I could care more.

Thresh’s death seemed to cheat us of a good fight scene as it was done off screen. Did it take its toll on Cato? Did Thresh fight valiantly? Was he overcome with rage? What happened?!

And the ending was all kind of... what? I mean... what? What was with the muttations? I hope they get explained later in the books, because that bit seemed to completely jump the shark. Not that anyone questioned it, really.

Though, it’s not like anyone questioned anything. So often I thought Katniss would ask questions, to find things out (mostly asking Peeta why the hell he was with the Careers) but nope. She doesn’t. Instead she just blindly goes along with everything in ignorance, not even caring to wonder after Collins is done with that bit of the book.

Oh, and am I the only one who thinks Rue didn’t get enough time in the book for us to form an emotional attachment to her? She was just there one minute, then she was gone.

But yeah, those are my rambling thoughts on it. No editing done there, bar spoilers, to really make this make sense, but hopefully it does. So tired, so it probably reads horribly. Like I said, I still enjoyed the book, I just have a lot of issues with the latter parts of the book.