Mockingjay

If you read my thoughts on Catching Fire, you'll remember I said it was weakest of the three books. That's because so little of it was important to the overall story arch. It was still a good read. You'll also remember that I compared the series to The Matrix trilogy. The Hunger Games, like The Matrix, is the best of the three and works on its own. Catching Fire, like The Matrix Reloaded, is a great book but depends on Mockingjay for it's conclusion. Unfortunately, like The Matrix Revolutions, Mockingjay is necessary for those who read Catching Fire and is the worst of the three on every level. However, unlike The Matrix Revolutions, Mockingjay does tie up any loose ends left by Catching Fire and doesn't suck all of the life right out of you.

The first two-thirds of this book are terrible. What's worse is that you can't just skip it. It's all fairly important to the story. What's even worse is that a whole bunch of things not important to the story are in there too, making the time between the awesome ending to Catching Fire and the good stuff in Mockingjay very painful to read. I had to force myself to finish this book like I have to force myself to go to my boring job. In fact, this book is exactly like my job. I have to go to work and do a bunch of important, boring things, and do a bunch of very needless, boring things. The needless, boring things exist only to validate my existence in the building, just like the needless boring things in the book serve to pad the book with pages, giving off the illusion that this needed to be a trilogy and couldn't have been done in two books. Trilogies make one book's worth more money than two-book-ogies. You do the math.

However, the last third is even more violent and awesome than all the rest of this series' violence combined. Innocent people getting mowed down as two corrupt entities struggle for power. Rebels blowing people's limbs off in rageful vengeance. It's great!

And then... it takes its sweet time ending. This isn't unique to Mockingjay. Lots of fantastic stories don't know when it's time to end. Take Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I've only seen the movies, don't be hatin'). It didn't end soon enough. I didn't need to see that Harry and Ron got their hanky panky on and produced off spring who are now attending Hogwarts and continued to be all wizardy. I didn't need to see Frodo take a row boat out to God knows where when the plot of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (again, I've only seen the movies) had wrapped up. The story was not better because of it. If it doesn't enhance the story, chop it off. The same can be said of Mockingjay's final chapter.

It's hard to put my feelings into words. Is Mockingjay a bad book? Yes, most definitely, it is. Is Mockingjay worth reading anyway? Yes, but only if you committed yourself to it by having read Catching Fire. Overall, if you know what you're getting into before you start this series and you love to read, the entire trilogy is worth reading. But, I wouldn't look down on you for only reading The Hunger Games. Catching Fire was good, but I'm not sure it was good enough to read and then having to read Mockingjay to make sense of it.