Book Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Published: 2010
Pages: 390
Category: fiction: young adult, fiction: fantasy
I didn’t repeat my internet-ordering mistakes with the release of Mockingjay. I waited a month until the release date and then calmly drove to the bookstore before work that morning to buy it. No waiting time! I didn’t quite have the luxury of sitting down and reading the whole thing from start to finish this time though, I had to go to work. Then i got to read it.
While a lot of the Internet was raving about Mockingjay and about how it was the greatest book of the series, I still feel that Catching Fire was the best book of the three – even though the middle books of trilogies often avoid this honour, as they suffer from not usually have a beginning or an end all to themselves.
I did find Mockingjay to be a chillingly accurate extrapolation of how wars are fought in the modern era. The war described in the pages of Suzanne Collins’ third Hunger Games novel is not solely about kills, destruction, or even one fought for the sake of morals. It is a war of perception, a war that is fought via the media on either side of the conflict. Just as many battles are fought on the airwaves as are fought on the ground. And the most important weapons the rebels have are Katniss – the symbol of the rebellion – and a hacker, who can put their message on the air for all of Panem to see, despite the government’s attempts to silence them.
I’m moving in toward the camera now, carried forward by my rage…”You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?…Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!”…”Cut!” Cressida’s voice snaps me back to reality, extinguishes me. She gives me a nod of approval. “That’s a wrap.” (99-100)
This is how a technological war is fought.
Mockingjay is also its own unique brand of heartwrenching. We lose characters, Collins goes to great lengths to convince us that this is indeed war, and that no one is safe, not until the very end. I love though, how Katniss finally wakes up and comes to her own conclusions about what and who is right, and what is wrong. At the end of the novel she finally takes matters into her own hands, and takes an active part in the revolution, becoming the Mockingjay that she had been named.
Philippa Adams 
Ohhh, I did not love this book. I found it wasn’t paced very well. Nothing happened and then suddenly everything happened at once. There was a little too much psychological torture and I felt that Katniss’ character wasn’t congruent with the last two books, where she was strong and held it together. Every five pages she had to be sedated and was crying. Don’t get me wrong, I love angst. But it impeded the development of the storyyy and character.
God that book made me depressed :S
I’m so glad I’m not the only one that felt this way. It seemed like all over the place everyone was just lavishing praise on Mockingjay, and I really didn’t feel like it was the best of the trilogy!
I enjoyed mockingjay, but I’m with you– Catching Fire was the best of the trilogy.
however, I did not see the pacing issues straight off, because I was so eager to FINISH the book and get through the plot so I knew what happened! It wasn’t until I slowed down towards the end that I realized how slowly pieces of it had moved.