Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I loved The Hunger Games. It was lightning-fast, clever, and engaging. I also really liked Catching Fire -- it started out a bit slower than its predecessor, but really picked up in the final third. In general, it served as both an echo and an expansion of what made The Hunger Games so exciting. I had high hopes for Mockingjay. I expected the story to blaze and explode, continuing to develop and intensify the characters and relationships from the first two books, before crashing into a satisfying conclusion. Instead, Collins dropped the ball and let the story fizzle, and it was painful to read. [Spoilers ahead.] First, the characters. In Mockingjay, Katniss spends a lot of time sedated, hiding, and having nightmares. The charming, gentle, selfless Peeta I knew and loved made no appearance -- instead, he's been tortured into a monster that illogically switches moods between violent, repentant, self-loathing, confused, and docile with no real reason except that Collins needs him to. I still like Gale, but he gets pushed aside because he makes Katniss mad (again, for no real reason, considering we're supposed to believe they're the closest and dearest of friends). All three of them seem to forget who they are, and who the others are -- you'd never know that for the past two books we've been watching them protect each other, cry over each other, miss each other, and comfort each other. We also get introduced to a lot of minor characters -- many of whose names I couldn't even be bothered to remember -- only to watch them get killed off one by one. We get it, Collins. There are casualties in war. Funny how none of those casualties are important characters, until we get to the most pivotal of moments. Second, the pacing. When I read the first two books, I could hardly put them down because there was always action and I was always desperate to know what would happen next. In Mockingjay, those moments of urgency were few and far between. There were endless descriptions of battle plans and technology that were tedious and hard to follow. When the action finally deigned to make an appearance, it happened in short bursts with a lot of wallowing in between. Third, the ending. I understand the point Collins was trying to make. War changes people. Okay. I get it. But given the backdrop of the first two books, I wasn't convinced that these characters would have been changed in these ways. Even the meager epilogue did nothing to balance the bleakness of the ending. Katniss chooses Peeta and completely gives up on Gale, which shocked and upset me, since I was always convinced that her relationship with Gale was the realer, deeper one. Even if she didn't choose him romantically, I have trouble believing that she could just write him off like it was nothing, and that he would go along with it. We also get no satisfying explanation for how Peeta was able to go from wanting to kill Katniss with his bare hands to being able to calmly raise a family with her. Perhaps most offensive of all, however, is the fact that after three books of buildup, the reader doesn't even get a front row seat when the Capitol finally falls. Instead, we're whisked away from the action with Katniss, kept in the dark with her while everything exciting happens, and then given an incomplete explanation that doesn't even cover what we most want to know. I was waiting to find out that there was more to Snow than just a supervillain exterior, waiting for a solid explanation for Katniss's last-minute turning on Coin, waiting to hear about what had become of the Capitol... but we got none of those things. Instead, we're given page after page of Katniss's tortured inner monologue, which is unrealistically brimming with metaphor. Mockingjay could have been the exciting conclusion of a thrilling and memorable trilogy. Instead, it was heavy-handed, slow, unsatisfying, and poorly executed. I think Collins could have made her point without sacrificing the fast pace and logical character/plot development of the first two books. Too bad she changed course at the last minute and took the trilogy with her.