Author: Suzanne Collins
When last we left Katniss Everdeen, she had been miraculously rescued from her second Hunger Games, and was being transported to the near-mythic District 13. Picking up right where Catching Fire left off, we follow her attempts to lead the rebellion (both symbolically and literally), to rescue her sometimes boyfriend Peeta, and to exact vengeance upon the sadistic President Snow.
"This one's for the fans" is an odd statement to make, and thus fits my demeanor perfectly. It's just as perfectly appropriate for this review. There's nothing inherently, functionally wrong with the book, but your level of enjoyment will vary greatly based on how invested you are in the characters. I'm invested enough to read about more grisly deaths, but do I care whether or not Katniss ends up dating Peeta, Gale, or neither? Nah. And, sadly for me (but great for the hardcore aficionados), a great deal of this book is spent on Katniss' pining and whining. A realistic portrayal of a seventeen-year-old girl's confusion and heartbreak or not, isn't this the girl who puts arrows through the throats of children? Are boy-troubles really her top priority right now?
The first, I don't know, three-quarters of this were a chore for me to read. There's some sort of message that Collins is attempting to convey here, about the cyclical nature of conflict and "gazing into the abyss", but it mostly gets lost in a tedious story about Katniss dressing up in a G-Force costume and leading the resistance. There's the expected third act twist, and another makeshift Hunger Games, but it was too little too late for me. If the climax had come somewhere around halfway through the book, and the rest were dedicated to the new paradigm shift, I would have been more entertained.
Not an embarrassingly terrible conclusion to the trilogy, just another decline in the overall quality thereof. It's another case of a writer becoming unexpectedly successful midway through telling a story, and forgetting what made her story work in the first place.
FREDERICK OPINES: MIDDLING
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