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.

Book Review: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bon blossoms into something deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles’ mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfil his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years to follow will test everything they hold dear.

The Song of Achilles was a book I was wary to even touch. I did Classical Civilisations at A Level and because of this I like anything referring to classical literature to be somewhat accurate. I can’t watch Disney’s Herculesthanks to this and whilst O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a great film but I couldn’t shake off the fact that it was too loosely based on the Odyssey. So when I saw that Madeline Miller BA and MA in Latin and Ancient Greek I thought I should give it a go.

To my pleasant surprise I found that the novel is actually fairly accurate to the original Homeric epics. Events, for the most part, take place how and when they should. Some liberties are taken with the story, such as Patroclus’ back story being tweaked, but this is artistic license that I can completely understand.

You see, Patroclus doesn’t really have much written about him. He’s mostly known just because of Achilles and that is all, whilst Achilles has more tales about him prior to Troy. Miller uses this well and uses his story to generate sympathy for the character, who has had a difficult childhood in the book – and it works!

The character of Patroclus is very sympathetic at first, being unloved by his father, then accidently killing some kid, leading him to be exiled. This is all pretty damn tragic, so when he starts getting on with Achilles you feel happy for him. I mean, he deserves some happiness.

But then we get a massive issue with this book: the characters. See, it’s all well and good having the characters be sympathetic at the beginning but not have too much character. They are just kids; they should grow and develop throughout the story. But they don’t. Both Patroclus and Achilles are so bland that they could give Aeneas a run for his money in the “Blandest Classical Character” competition (I jest! I love you, Aeneas!).

This utter blandness stretches further than the main two characters, though. Most characters are bland and dull. The ones who aren’t are usually made up of single emotions, such as Agamemnon, who is just rage, or Pyrrhus, who reminds me a lot of Joffrey from Game of Thrones. The only characters I could say I liked were Odysseus, possibly due to my love of him from the Odyssey, and Briseis, who actually had emotions.

Characters are obviously not Miller’s strong point, and this carries over in the dialogue. Conversations can be hard to follow if speech has no name beside it as no character has personality to distinguish themselves, aside from Odysseus. On top of this, it seems Miller at times actively attempts to avoid dialogue, which becomes quite evident later on.

However, Miller does have a strong point in her description. At times she can beautifully describe certain areas or people. The book is narrated by Patroclus, so the world is described from his point of view. Because of this, however, it seems that some description can be lacking. She can brilliantly tell you about Achilles’ naked body over and over, but when it gets to battle she seems to have no way of making the fighting flow.

I had other issues with the narrative. On many occasions the structure of “If he was (insert emotion) then he did not show it.” I believe that formula may have been used at least ten times throughout the novel, maybe even more. This just felt clunky later on when it happened in quick succession. Furthermore, Miller would spend a long time describing a few days, then suddenly skip through 5 years for no apparent reason, which happened to be quite jarring. Nonetheless, for the most part the description is fairly strong and is important for carrying the plot forwards.

But then we have another issue: the plot. The start of the novel eases you in to understanding Patroclus, the situation he’s in, et cetera. He befriends Achilles, falls in love with him, and then they head off to get trained by a centaur for a bit. Then the book kind of stalls for a while, with nothing in particular happening.

Without the in depth and interesting characters we don’t have anything to really help us through this period. I nearly completely abandoned the book, but I was waiting for Troy to start. When I thought Troy was on the horizon the book stalled a bit more, had a few interesting parts at Troy and then ended with what seemed like an incredibly rushed ending.

My biggest issue with the plot had to be that the homosexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus seemed incredibly forced. There seemed to be no romance, no real love. Just lust. Patroclus constantly comments on how Achilles looks, not his personality. But when hints at heterosexuality come along at times there is focus upon personality, which confused me. Did Miller have a kind of agenda, or am I looking into things a bit too much? Probably the latter... definitely the latter, but it still concerned me.

Despite all of this, though, I have to say I did enjoy the book. Well, to an extent. It is definitely an easy to read book and does have a lot to offer people who don’t know the origins of the tale. The writing is somewhat simplistic and not necessarily deep, so is hard to put down. But, as I’ve said before, there are many issues I found with the plot and narrative structure.

The Song of Achilles won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012. I don’t mean to be too harsh on the book because it wasn’t bad, but I think the other books in the running for the prize money must have been kind of bad, otherwise I don’t see how this won. Maybe it’s because it has its roots in the Iliad, the influence of the Homeric epic pushing it through to win. For me the book was pretty average. Readable, but nothing to get excited about.

Book Review: "The Red House" by Mark Haddon

After his mother's death, Richard, a newly remarried hospital consultant, decides to build bridges with his estranged sister, inviting Angela and her family for a week in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children, a single family and all of them strangers. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks.

But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours. And watching over all of them from high on the dark hill, Karen, Angela's stillborn daughter.

Mark Haddon was one of those authors who wrote one book everyone knows and then faded into obscurity. Maybe it was the 3 years between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother that did him in. That 3 year gap may have been long enough for people to forget who he was. Or maybe people never remembered the name of the author, only remembering the title of the book. I have found that most people I've talked to about Curious Incident don't actually know the author's name. Which is a shame as he is a great author.

After the success of Curious Incident I can only presume that people wanted more of the same, and A Spot of Bother was not that. In fact, according to Wikipedia, A Spot of Bother received mostly mixed reviews. I feel this is undeserved, as it was a great book that I feel more people need to pick up and give a chance. Yes, it is not Curious Incident, but it's good for an author to try and change and adapt, to never be stale.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because The Red House is another Mark Haddon book that seems to have flown relatively under the radar. In addition to that it runs more so in the style of A Spot of Bother than Curious Incident. This is not, of course, a bad thing. It should also be noted that though it is more in common with A Spot of Bother the book is not just a carbon copy of it.

Blimey, it's taking me far too long to get here, but let's actually talk about the book itself. As the synopsis shows, the book is about two families coming together for a holiday after the death of a relative. This initially reminded me of The Darjeeling Limited, a simply fantastic film about three brothers attempting to bond on a holiday after the death of their father. Over the seven days the families stay in this house not a massive amount particularly happens, but rather lots of little things.

You see, the beauty of The Red House lies in the fact that Mark Haddon makes the mundane and the fairly ordinary interesting to read about. Of course, some things aren't quite that ordinary, but still believable, yet never before have I found someone going on an early morning run so interesting, nor has saying grace at the dinner table been such an important issue. These little events have massive repercussions throughout the book.

The way in which Haddon makes these issues interesting is through his writing style. This style is nothing like his previous two adult books, nor is it like any book I've read with a similar focus. The Red House has a narrative that focuses upon a stream of consciousness. Though all written in third person it has the feel of a book written in first person. Usually a section will focus upon a single character, going through their thoughts, feelings and actions as if they are personally contemplating the situation. Sometimes the narrative focus will switch during a paragraph or section, which doesn’t confuse but rather intensifies any drama happening at the current moment in time.

This focus is also enhanced by Haddon’s choice of language when focussing on each character. When focussing on Benjy, the 8 year old boy, the words used will be more simplistic and sentence structure less complex, yet when focussing on Alex, the 17 year old boy, the writing will be more centralised around Alex, swear words will be used more often and more sexual language will be used. This helps the reader understand each character more.

However, it has to be said that understanding who each member of the family is and where they fit in can be quite difficult at first. It took me a while to figure out a family tree, which I then needed to write up as a quick reference. The narrative structure, though good for the story, did not help me get to grips with the family structure, though when this issue was overcome there are no longer any issues with the narrative.

Throughout the book there are a massive amount of twists and turns. Plot gets slowly dispensed, keeping the reader in suspense. Most of the plot gets resolved in the last quarter of the book, though there are points where mini-plots end earlier. Haddon does seem to run out of steam near the end, however, with three characters having to be rescued and brought back home within the week, but he recuperates within the ending of the book.

Finishing the book I was left somewhat upset. I had enjoyed reading about these people, as dysfunctional as they were. Yes, some of them (read: most of them) were horrible people, but they weren’t necessarily horrible people. They were just normal people. And leaving them made me feel sad. Some people had come out better, some came out worse, some the same, but this didn’t matter. This was a week of escape from a life which they would go back to and experience their lives in almost the same way. This is, at least, how I interpreted things. Things just keep on going the same.

The Red House is definitely a book you should read, especially if you’ve liked Haddon’s previous work. It brings intrigue to the normalcy of life and does so through people you will probably feel you already know. It’s not too easy to read at first, but the style of writing will draw you in and keep you going throughout.

Battle Royale - A Response

This post is in response to the review of the manga, film and novel versions of Battle Royale, a book I love, a film I think is very good, and a manga I hate. This post is just about my thoughts on the manga, expanding upon the thoughts of the review. You can find the review at Fucking Zombies! Check it out, it's a good blog.

You feel almost exactly the way I did about all three of these. Thought, I have to say I have an uncontrollable hatred of the manga.

See, the manga changed characters too much. As you said, things are over sexualised, but I don't think you've even covered the extent of it. These two sentences come hand in hand as Mitsuko Souka such a massive amount that her entire motivation in the manga is sexual thrills. Which pisses me off. Oh, and having her backstory seemed like a cop out to make her sympathetic, when really she's just a terrible person.

On top of this, the big change with Shuya Nanahara with his "I refuse to kill" atttitude just irritated me as it completely missed the point of the novel (having to kill to survive, even though you don't like it) and would have just caused too many issues throughout the book.

But the biggest betrayal in the manga is probably my favourite storyline in the novel: that of the journey of Hiroki Sugimura. They made him out to be an ultimate badass, when really he was just a normal guy driven by love. On top of that, the fact he doesn't die at the correct time just ruins the importance of his story. His love powers him on, in the novel, but he dies because of the island, but also is able to express his love because of it. Kind of a double edged sword kinda place.

And then he does a Kamehameha. I mean REALLY?! This is meant to be set in REALITY, and not some fucking fantasy world.

There are lots of other issues with the manga besides character change, though. One of the biggest issues I have, as you said, is the art. Yes, everyone is quite 'bishi', but that wasn't really my issue. My issue was that everyone was drawn as a certain category, which, to me, felt like the artist was a lazy bastard. Now to give each one names.

First we have the 'Frog'. This is reserved for your "ugly on the outside, ugly on the inside" types. So many lines on the face, drool and maybe even attempts at being creepily sexual. Kinda reminds me of the snails from Uzumaki.

 After that we have the 'Nutter', which is what I like to call the same face and stance everyone pulls when they go insane. It usually consists of crying, weird eyes and maybe movie in a funny way.

We also have the 'Brute’. He’s basically your large-nosed big guy. The diametric opposite of this is the ‘Kid’, your type who, whilst in the same class as everyone else, seems to be about 10 years younger.

 

We finally have the ‘Hero’, your average main character type, as well as the ‘Woman’, because at least the art can be consistent there.

If you want to see a woman type, look at the original blog.

So yeah, I think that’s all of the characters. It’s only, y’know, been about 3 or 4 years since I read it. This rage sticks.

I do find you are pretty correct on everything, though. I just felt that the horrifying quality of the manga needed to be expanded upon. The novel is one of my favourite books. With this you may think “Well, any changes would piss you off!” No, actually. The film is so different to the book but the film does something good: it tells a competent story and knows where to focus to tell its own story. It captured the essence of the original novel, but does its own thing with it, and that’s only good.

This is a long post for a response (so much so I decided it would serve better as a blog post), but as I said, I felt the manga needed to be vastly expanded upon.

I just hope the video game is better than the manga.

What? This isn't to do with Battle Royale? Dammit!