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| |  | Books | Home » » Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) | | | | | | | Description: | | Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Suzanne Collins | | Hardcover:
| 400 pages | | Publisher:
| Scholastic Press | | Publication Date:
| August 24, 2010 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0439023513 | | Package Length:
| 8.3 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.8 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.0 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 493 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Did not like mockingjaySep 09, 2010
The book was awful. I thought the part about peeta ruined a lot of it. Very dissapointed.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Some great writing; but what are we left with?Sep 08, 2010
I cried at the end of Mockingjay. Were my tears the kind the author intended to evoke? I'm not sure.
Mockingjay (and the trilogy as a whole) paints an absolutely devastating portrait of humanity. The book begins on a dismal note and the horrors only get more intense and explicit as it progresses. These horrors aren't just grisly deaths, although there are plenty of those. The horrors are psychological. Katniss -- our heroine? -- is reduced to a confused, victimized shell, and even her supposedly heroic choice toward the end of the book is tainted with questions as to her real motives.
Who is there to root for in the world Collins has created? The bad guys are as bad as ever; the good guys aren't really all that good; and innocent children suffer and die. Katniss herself no longer has the luxury of killing only in the arena, and is reduced to slaughtering whatever stranger gets in her way. (Yet we're supposed to be touched that she can't bring herself to kill a boy she cares for.)
War will do that to people. Terrible things happen; people see atrocities and are never the same again. Most don't emerge heroes; they emerge survivors, or they die. Is that what Collins had in mind for Katniss? Is our protagonist only a miserable pawn, playing a role in events she often isn't even there to witness? (One flaw of the book is that while certain big events unfold, Katniss is out of commission, fragile and brooding, only hearing about what has happened.)
Readers expecting the ingenuity of the death traps in the previous books will be rewarded with similarly terrible concoctions here, except that this time they're booby traps in the Capitol City -- and I had a very hard time believing that these traps had been engineered into the city streets the way they had been in the arenas. I was able to put that disbelief aside, but it still nagged at me afterwards.
What are we left with after reading Mockingjay? War is horrible. Well, yes. Does Collins go on and say that it's only the kindness of people, the goodness of one person here and there, that can pull us through and give us hope? No, she never gives us that satisfaction nor much of any redemption in any form. She leaves us at "war is horrible, and it's going to happen again and again, and we'll always be damaged goods." The best she gives us, through the mouth of one oddly chosen character, is that maybe this time will be different and humanity will learn to be at peace, or maybe not.
At the end of Mockingjay, I cried, but not because I was touched by the characters or even the story. I cried for my baby son that he's been born into a world in which humanity could be even remotely like what Collins has shown us. It may be true, but what is the point of leaving your reader with nothing but empty hopelessness?
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
If you loved the 1st two books, DON'T READ this oneSep 08, 2010
Horrible disappointment. I LOVED the first two books. Read them both twice. Recommended the series to everyone I spoke with. I was afraid to start Mockingjay b/c I was afraid I wouldn't want it end. I wish I had never read it. It was dark and depressing and nothing else. Terrible conclusion to what started out as a great series.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Missed opportunitiesSep 08, 2010
I loved the first two books, because the were just pure and simply good reads. In the Mockingjay I just feel as if there were way to many missed opportunities, by the author, to bring the readers emotions into play. After spending two days reading the book, and three days reading the reviews, (some of the chapters in the book are shorter than many of the reviews. To funny) I simply want to say that with all the death thar took place in this last book, there were just to many missed opportunities at setting the reader up emotionally. This was not a bad book, but I probably would not have chosen to finish it, had I not read the first two.
 When clear lines get blurredSep 08, 2010
Not the best of the series, and very depressing.
This book takes a turn that is unexpected, where the lines between right and wrong/good and evil blur. None of the characters have clear and clean motivations, aside from Prim. Suddenly the forces of light and liberation are not always good, but self interested. Katniss is on the verge of madness, and never really leaves it. Even Katniss' since of right and wrong leaves her, she is driven by revenge and bitterness of betrayal.
In the end, nobody is happy or saved, they survive. People don't like the ending, but for what Katniss had endured, it was the best she could do. I found the ending satisfying if not uplifting. There was no way, it could ever end in sweetness and light.
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