I'm assuming that most people have read these, I'm just a little late to the party. And I'm reviewing them together because they aren't that long and the story just picks up where the last one left off.
I think that "The Hunger Games" was the strongest of the three in terms of the solidity of the story line and its presentation. I think the twist with Katniss and Peeta being willing to commit suicide rather than kill each other was a good ending. I feel that the integrity of the characters was more or less kept in tact, which I think was the point.
The thing that I don't really understand about "Catching Fire" is why President Snow thinks that it is a good idea to bring Katniss back to the Hunger Games, where she is once more in the spot light. It may be, and I considered this, that the Quarter Quells were set up before hand and President Snow had no choice, but Collins leaves the source of the Quarter Quell rules up for grabs. It does set up a lot of discontent among the victors, so that works as a plot point, but from the information that you get elsewhere in the book, it seems like the victors were a pretty discontent, mistreated bunch anyway.
"Mockingjay" was a disappointment for me. Katniss spent most of the time worrying about being the cause of so many peoples' deaths. I'm just a little tired of the woe-is-me-look-how-many-people-died-because-of-my-actions thing. Yes, you made decisions that if you may have made different ones, that might have saved peoples' lives, but you are at war. You are fighting people who want you and everyone with you dead. This is the reality of the situation. I wish just once the angsty teenager at the center of things like this would finally get that, or that an adult would explain it to them. Yes, you should morn the loss of life, and get mad about it and second guess is a natural response, but blaming yourself for all of it is self defeating.
I also like the point made to Katniss that she needs to remember who the enemy is, but perhaps because of my American upbringing, I jumped to the conclusion that the enemy really is tyranny, embodied in President Snow and President Coin. I think that Collins might have been thinking along those lines too, which is why Katniss assassinated Coin instead of Snow at the end, but a conclusion isn't drawn there. It seems like was all about Prim and Snow promising not to lie to Katniss.
I've got to be honest, I was annoyed at the love triangle. Collins didn't spend enough time developing the relationship between Katniss and Gale. She had chances, quite a few in fact. So it always felt like Katniss was going to choose Peeta, Gale was just there to complete the triangle. The whole thing could have been carried off with Katniss falling for Peeta. There was enough in their relationship to create questions and uncertainty, without the third wheel.
2 comments:
I absolutely agree, especially about Mockingjay. It took so much will power to not just thumb forward a few pages to try and pass the whining.
Good summaries. To me, Mockingjay felt inevitable, but not satisfying. I thought the love triangle was relatively well-developed (MUCH more so in the books than in the movie!), and I know Katniss had to figure it out on her own, but still . . . I'm over the teen-girl-who-am-I-going-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-angst bit. Waaaay overdone. I think Mockingjay could have been much more empowering, especially if we knew Katniss wasn't totally unhinged when she shot President Coin.
Even so, I really liked these books. Good, fast, intriguing reads.
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