Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3)

#511
Title: Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3)
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2010
400 pages

Another action-packed account of Katniss as she becomes a larger than life symbol of the revolution, still can't really manage her own image, and is ultimately utilized by more players and for more ends than she can imagine. This is a novel about spinning out of control, and Collins adroitly renders the vertiginous plunge (sometimes with literal plunges into monster-filled sewers).

I have no objection to the deaths and destruction of the ongoing and climactic fights. This is a dystopian novel, and it's time those teenagers got off my lawn and thought about how you can suffer losses, bleakness, and even love triangles that don't include any vampires. However, I didn't initially find the conclusion satisfying. It's a little like Rowling's deflating retreat-to-the suburbs epilogue, plus a heaping cup full of post-traumatic stress. As I've sat with it, though, I find it becoming if not more appealing, more palatable. It's not even the action of the ending that concerns me, but the timing and sagginess of it. I may have to read it again to be more specific than that.