Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I find myself at a loss to explain why so many people like this book so much. The premise sounds interesting enough, but it has been done before, is practically cliche in Japanese media, and Collins has not done it well. The book is boring. Most of the first third is made of infodumps. They're not even well-executed infodumps. The writing style is simple and straightforward. Such a style can be fantastic when done right, but in this case it (with the exception of a few nonetheless forgettable passages) has no elegance or flavor; it's just plain boring, and it is incapable of rendering the infodumps anything more than snooze-inducing. The plot is very predictable, and the author throws in a couple of plot twists that, rather than ramping up the tension, excitement, character development, or any of that, slaughter what little tension the plot possessed. They are deus ex machinas that save the main character from having to make the tough decisions one would expect from a book with this premise. And the main character never has to make any truly tough decisions. She is never conflicted by anything except the book's contrived love triangle. Even when she is forced to kill, she feels little to no remorse. She just spends a sentence or two thinking about it with no particular emotion, and then forgets about it for the rest of the book. The author never lets her kill preemptively, only allowing her to act in self-defense, and her opponents are so poorly developed that the reader has no real reason to care about them. The main character does not act consistently her age. At the beginning of the book, she acts in a reasonable manner for a sixteen year old subjected to poverty. But later in the book she seems more like a ten year old, both in the way she acts and in the way she is described (she apparently looks like a "little girl" in one particular dress, which is quite a feat considering her age). At almost the same time, she acts like some sort of hardened veteran in her utter unflappability. All the characters are unflappable. For goodness sake, even the twelve-year old is unflappable. Where is all the emotional distress that should result from the threat of death and the necessity of killing innocents? From being suddenly and forcefully separated from family and friends? From being constantly monitored, starved, and injured? Despite the book's unbelievability, predictability, and general terribleness, the second and third thirds of the book are admittedly somewhat entertaining. But still, I found myself skipping over large chunks of boring text even in the middle of the best of the action scenes. And the very best part of the book, the only part in which we are shown a relationship that feels relatively real, is all too brief. The mockingjays are cool, though. I notice that many of the bafflingly few other low reviews cite the book's disturbingness as a reason for their low rating of it. I disagree with these people; this book needs to be more disturbing, not less. There's violence, but it is hardly graphic, and it happens to people the reader knows little to nothing about. This premise has so much potential for emotional turmoil, horror, and difficult decisions, but the book completely fails to deal with any of that and is presented in a sparkling clean and bloodless (and lifeless) manner. I actually find is disturbing how the book glosses over what should be a horrific situation. In short, I have no bloody idea why people like this book so much. It's derivative, predictable, poorly written rubbish.