Tuesday is the release of the Mockingjay, the incredibly super highly anticipated conclusion of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. (But I don’t have to tell you that: let’s face it, if you like YA enough to read this blog, you already know that.) So here, have an open thread for discussing whatever you care to about the series. Who will live and who will die? Will Katniss have to go through a third round of games? Does Katniss end up with Gale or Peeta (and do you care who she ends up with)?
The only thing we ask is that, while spoilers for The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are fair game, no one spoils Mockingjay for 48 hours after its release (so all day Tuesday and Wednesday) so people will have a chance to read it for themselves. (I know I’m taking Tuesday off work to do so…)
Okay? Have at it!
Tags: Suzanne Collins
I will start with a link and a prediction!
Why I’m Team Katniss from Malinda Lo. She puts her finger on EXACTLY what bothers me about the Team Gale/Team Peeta mentality.
That said, prediction: Gale’s gonna bite the dust.
The link that Rebecca posted pretty much sums up my feelings about the love triangle too. I would like it if she didn’t end up with either of them. Though I have to say I like Peeta more that Gale. Mostly because his name is really amusing to say.
I totally also think that out of the main characters Gale is most likely to go. 🙁 Though Haymitch is up there too. I can’t think about it too much though. Last time one of my favorite characters died in a book I ended up throwing the book on the floor and never finished it. (haha I should probably try to read that again now that I’ve had years to cool off)
so I literally just finished the book, and I have to say I’m almost disappointed. I honestly didn’t care about whether she ended up with Peeta or Gale (though I don’t really like how her relationship with him was destroyed), I was bothered by the whole ambiguity at the end. I guess I like my plots to wrap up nicely, no questions left unanswered. We can probably assume it was Coin who ordered the bombs, and I believe that is what we are shown Katniss believes, but I still feel a little empty.
I guess I wanted a little more of a happy ending (Why Prim???? WHY???), but that’s not the reality of war, and since that’s what this book is all about…
“…but that’s not the reality of war, and since that’s what this book is all about…”
You know, I’ve been using that idea to justify a lot of Mockingjay, and I’m not sure I should. Katniss’s inertness, the confusion of the death scenes, even the ending– maybe it’s all realistic, all faithful to the real costs of war. But I don’t think it’s great storytelling, and I don’t want to give Collins a free pass.
Prim’s death would’ve been a sickeningly powerful statement about the cost of war if it had been more effectively written. I didn’t even cry, for pity’s sake (and I cry at everything). Instead she randomly appears out of nowhere, is dead two seconds later, and then Katniss is unconscious. To use a HARRY POTTER SPOILER as an analogy, it felt more like Lupin and Tonks’ deaths than Dobby’s death. Random and too-fast and unemotional.
I think the vague, apathetic, generalizing narrative of this book detracted a LOT from the story that should have been told. 🙁