Once inside they find a woman, but before she can alert any Capitol forces, Katniss kills her. Now, in the heart of the Capitol, they need to hide until the rebels advance further. As they move through the streets of the Capitol, they find themselves right in the heart of the Capitol streets and are at a risk of being seen. Cressida leads them to a shop owned by an old friend of hers, Tigris. She agrees to keep them safe and feed them. The team manages to stay in the cellar of Tigris ' shop, where they stay for a couple of days and watch the rebels advance.
The Capitol and the rebels are now engaged in a full scale war. One night, while everyone sleeps, Katniss hears Peeta and Gale having a conversation about her in which Gale says that Katniss will choose who she thinks she can't live without. This upsets her but keeps it to herself. The next morning, Tigris heads out to try and gather information. Tigris returns in the evening with meat and roast potatoes for the squad, and informs them that the Capitol citizens have been forced out onto the streets while the war carries on.
She then shows them a television broadcast in which President Snow announces that he is opening the mansion to all Capitol refugees. Katniss realizes they need to make use of the flood of refugees in the center of the Capitol. At first, the others are wary of the plan, but they decide to go forward with it.
The squad plans out their course of action over the course of the following day and night. While waiting, Capitol citizens are sent further into the city. They thank Tigris for her help and leave the shop and walk into the streets. They become split up in the process, leaving Gale and Katniss together, but a riot ensures and the rebels start attacking the two, causing the Capitol to fight back.
Countless civilians are killed in the crossfire, and Katniss witnesses a young girl get shot. Gale and Katniss know they must keep moving, otherwise they'll be killed or identified, so they keep moving, running through the streets avoiding gunfire.
Gale manages to get a gun from a Peacekeeper, and Katniss keeps her bow hidden beneath her coat. They see a pod activate, which sends a purple beam of light down a street, causing everyone caught in it to bleed to death from every orifice. Another pod activates, causing another street to split down the middle into a crevice below. Many people, civilian and fighter alike, fall into the pit and Katniss and Gale become separated. He almost escapes, but he is captured by Peacekeepers and orders Katniss to shoot him, but she can't bring herself to do so.
As Katniss flees further into the Capitol with the intent of finding and killing President Snow, she finds herself pressing on alone towards Snow's mansion, which has supposedly been opened to shelter Capitol children but is actually intended to provide human shields for Snow.
A huge crowd of young children are huddled behind the barricade as Katniss watches a hovercraft marked with the Capitol seal drop dozens of parachutes down on the children, containing medical supplies such as food and water.
As the children collect the parachutes, bombs placed in the supply packages explode and kill many of them. As Katniss and the crowd watch in horror, rebel medics arrive and start to break through the barricade in order to help the children.
Then, Katniss notices her sister Prim in the crowd of children helping. She rushes towards the barricades, shouting her sisters name. Prim hears Katniss and turns to see her running towards her.
As Katniss gets nearer to the barricade, a second wave of bombs go off, sending Katniss hurtling through the air and killing many more children, including Prim. The last word from Prim in the novel before she died was "Katniss". Katniss is transferred to President Snow's mansion, now that the rebels have finally taken control over the Capitol, but Katniss is severely burned and has been diagnosed with depression, verging on the edge on insanity.
Katniss doesn't speak and wanders around the mansion alone, eating very little and consuming large amounts of morphling. While on the drug, the dead visit Katniss, including her sister.
Her mother takes care of her, but neither of them speak and both are drained emotionally and psychologically, especially Katniss.
President Snow is tried of crimes against humanity and various war crimes, and is found guilty. One day, Katniss ventures into the rose garden surprised to find that it is where Snow is being kept. She picks a rose for Snow to wear at his execution. They sit down to talk, although Katniss says few words. He apologizes for the death of her sister, but he tells Katniss that the final assault that killed Primrose Everdeen was ordered by President Coin, not the Capitol.
Katniss realizes that if this is true, the bombing may have been the result of a plan originally developed by her friend Gale; however, Gale almost denied his involvement. Katniss doesn't know what to believe or who to trust.
Coin decides they should hold a vote to see if they should hold a 76th Hunger Games consisting with the children from those who had most power in the Capitol. Peeta votes no, saying that it would be wrong to do so. Beetee votes no, saying that the rebels fought to end the Hunger Games, not allow more. Annie votes no, and says Finnick would say no too. Enobaria and Johanna vote yes. Katniss vote yes, saying that it would be for Prim.
Haymitch agrees with her. Katniss gives Coin the rose to give to Snow. On the day of Snow's execution, everyone in the mansion prepares. Katniss is surprised by her old prep team, including Effie Trinket , who dress her into her Mockingjay outfit, telling her that all other stylists were killed after the Quarter Quell.
Furthermore, the hosts of the show almost always refuse to tell the candidates beforehand what kind of changes they are planning to do. And this is just one of the most overt and easily visible parts of autonomy losses contestants experience in such shows. Like in the Hunger Games all scenes we -the audience gets to see are carefully composed and manipulated to convey to us certain picture of a situation.
And during the course of every new year shows come out that take it to new extremes. Considering what some people are willing to do or endure physically and emotionally in some kinds of these reality shows like Naked and Afraid or all other survival shows, the procedure of the Hunger Games is not so far off of the reality anymore.
And interestingly, the reasons for doing it are almost the same: Entertainment of the masses. The Hunger Games novels are told in the first person perspective of the main character Katniss Everdeen. The novels are written in present tense which adds to the credibility of the narrator. Altogether the combination of the first person narration, the time mode, and especially the realistic characterization of the main character generatea feeling of authenticity.
Other than the usual main character of many YA science fiction novels Katniss is not the all virtuous, rebellious heroine who has a dramatic key-experience and decides to fight injustice. Mostly she isjust an average young girl with many shortcomings and insufficiencies. After her father died she becomes the only provider of her family and feels completely responsible for the well-being of her little sister and mother.
She does not want to make a point or to be especially heroic, she just wants to save her sister. That I am upstaged by a dead pig. My heart starts to pound, I feel my face burning. I hear shouts of alarm as people stumble back.
Everyone stares at me in disbelief. Then I give a slight bow and walk straight towards the exit without being dismissed. Collins, Back in 13, Katniss and Finnick watch another interview with Peeta, but this time she can see that he has been tortured and is hurt. Katniss eventually gets Gale to confess, but she feels betrayed. Gale and Katniss, growing farther and farther apart, return to District 12 to film more propos.
Katniss remembers how she used to be happy there and wonders what her life might have been like had she run away with Gale.
During another live Capitol programming, in which Snow and a very battered and fragile-looking Peeta appear together, Beetee is able to break through the Capitol feed to broadcast clips of the rebel propos. While Command rejoices, Katniss knows that their success means more pain and suffering for Peeta. The feed cuts out just as Peeta is hit to the floor, his blood splattering the tile.
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What I really wanted is Katniss back. I know I can't have her, but if I had to lose her, I wanted to feel heartbreak instead of nothing. About the love triangle But I was happy with the resolution for these reasons: 1. Gale never showed up in this book, not the intense Gale hiding a painful love for Katniss that I loved. Not once in this book did I feel his love for her. Was comfortable with her, coldly understanding, wanted to win her because it was a competition, but never once did I sense any love.
And when he knew the enormous hurdle he had to overcome to win her back, he laughed and walked away. I would not have minded if the Gale who showed up for this story had been one of its casualties. It was pretty clear from the first chapter that Collins was directing us away from this relationship she had dangled in front of us. If this is the way the relationship had always been, as this book seems to imply, than this is the relationship that should have been there in Catching Fire.
For the first time in the trilogy, Peeta was not a Gary Stu, a doormat, a little too sacrificial for me to believe. He bite back.
Unlike during the games, I never doubted that he could survive on his own. He stopped wanting to be a pointless martyr the death pleas were still there, but this time they made sense. Not that I ever wanted Peeta to be mean or broken, but he can have heart and a backbone too. He could have a few flaws. Finally, I could root for him. My last reason is not that as Gale and Peeta changed, Katniss did too, and so did the world they lived in.
In a harsh war world, you need someone strong and skilled by your side. In the other books, Katniss needed Gale. In a world where you have lost everything and no longer have a reason or the mental state or the will to fight, you need someone soft and caring. Even before Katniss said her bit about needing heart not fire, I knew she was going to say it. And finally, the words were true. So yes, I am eating my words and saying Katniss ended up with the right person.
I just hate what Collins did to her to make her need it. I know Collins is capable of power. In the end, I was too numb to feel its power, to even cry, to feel anything at all. I left a fantastic series with a major blank. View all 94 comments. Feb 21, Kiki rated it it was ok Shelves: love-stinks , lost-the-will-to-live , zombies , books-to-use-as-weapons , ya , dystopian , choking-noises.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I've seen both of the other movies for this series, and while I enjoyed them greatly, the third instalment was on another level entirely. It's one of the best movies I've seen in a very, very long time.
Good job, movie people. You made a meh book into a stellar piece of cinema. Probably the best ten pages of the series. The pages [ This just in : the movie adaptation, Mockingjay: Part 1 , was absolutely outstanding. The pages before that, however, deserve nothing. The first pages can kiss my ass. This book was a fucking slog. I kid you not. This book tried me to the point of breaking. About halfway through, I was ready to feed the damn thing to my dog.
I'm not the biggest Hunger Games fan. Y'all know that. Catching Fire was just fantastic. I really, really and truly enjoyed it. Mockingjay was a bloodbath.
If you're sensitive to pointless deaths and gratuitous violence, then this is not the book for you. Actually, I like that word. It describes this book perfectly.
Everything in this book was gratuitous and over the top, from the wangst to the ridiculous romantic interludes in the middle of battle scenes, and from the candy-gore violence to the stupid, overly-disgusting deaths of several characters who did not need to die. There's also the writing, which is so overwrought - it's not even like the author took the sparseness of the first book and butchered it.
It's like she took the sparseness, fed it to her dog, fed the dog to a crocodile, fed the crocodile to a Tyrannosaurus rex, cut the Tyrannosaurus rex up into steaks, sold the steaks in Soho to a cabaret dancer, A-bombed the cabaret dancer's house, collected the ashes, mixed them into fluorescent paint, and then splattered the paint all over the White House in D.
Because we, as readers who have stuck by and read the entire series through, need an entire page of Creative Writing Class explanation on what the Hanging Tree song means.
It's like in the first book, when we were constantly being told exactly what the dandelions represent. Everything, from Katniss's clothes which she's weirdly fixated with to her circular, drier-than-Egyptian-sand inner monologues were painstakingly pored over to the point of ridiculousness. Shall I repeat that again? One more time? Contrary to the masses, I love reading books where loads of lovable characters die in the final fight. I love going through that grief, feeling the torment of watching one of my beloved friends die a bloody death.
In fact, in my own work, I have a death list. I literally have a list of the most beloved characters, and I've put stars in red pen against all those who die.
There are many red stars on that list. But what I do not enjoy, and what I found far too much of in Mockingjay , are pointless deaths. Deaths that don't ensure anyone else's survival, are excessively undignified, or never grieved for.
Finnick, Mesalla, Mitchell, Boggs, and Cinna all died ridiculous deaths that really did nothing to aid Katniss's bringing down the Capitol. Essentially, they were all just Mauve Shirts, and they had been all along. I mean, fine. If the author wanted to kill these characters, go ahead and do it. It's actually not the fact that the characters died that bothered me. Yes, I was absolutely distraught over the death of Finnick he just married Annie!
Annie was pregnant! What the fuck kind of sadist kills that? I'd probably kill him too. But the way in which Finnick dies is nonsensical. YA is a tricky field in which to write dystopian. True dystopian always deals with death. It always deals with untimely death, tragic lives and terrible situations in which people are abused and scarred, in any and every way. But YA is inspiring to young people.
YA is a window to different ideologies and -isms held up by other people; for instance, Mockingjay is a clear message against war. But YA is also meant for a broad audience of a younger age, and that comes with a responsibility to instill a message that yes, will inspire, but coax some kind of hope out of readers. Some kind of desire to be a better person. Some kind of knowledge that there are wonderful things in the world worth salvaging, and weathering difficult patches in life will ultimately result in a brighter future.
This sounds idealistic, I know. But this series is shelved in Children's. Kids as young as 12 are picking these books up, and what are they finding? The world sucks. People suck. Give up, and stop caring, because nothing good will ever come of trying. Perseverance will get you nowhere.
Suicide and alcoholism will make you feel better. Where is Katniss? Who's the drugged-up shadow that's replaced her? In Mockingjay , this fickle, doom-and-gloom girl is not the battleaxe we met in The Hunger Games. This Katniss is constantly waking up in hospital, taking drugs and completely losing the will to fight for the people she loves. Her voice is flat, drab, full of a whole lot of wangst surrounding the love triangle that, during the latter half of the book, became one of the very main concerns.
I hear a lot of guff about this not being a romance, but it's quite clear that it is. And the scene in Tigris's cellar when Katniss pretends to sleep, but actually lies awake listening to Gale and Peeta talk about how they both love her unconditionally, and are perfectly fine to let her choose who she'll pick like a carton of juice off the shelf in the supermarket, and who she'll dump on his ass?
Brought back some pretty pungent T-word memories. Gale and Peeta have absolutely no self-respect, and this scene was totally unrealistic. People do not behave like that in real life. Think about it: you're sitting facing the person who you know has been fooling around with the person you wholeheartedly love, and have done for years. The person you one day see yourself marrying. I'm cool with that. I get it. No biggie. I'd demand to know why I was being toyed with, used even, and frankly?
I'd walk away. I'd pick up my dignity and get out of there, because being treated like a piece of chewy candy in a pack of two that she can't decide whether or not to eat is an insult, and unspeakably degrading. I kind of wanted Katniss to end up alone. Yes, once I'd forced myself to come to terms with the fact that that wasn't going to happen, I did enjoy the last ten pages greatly. They were quite beautiful, actually, as long as I pushed myself to suck up everything I hated about the miserable and hopeless tone of this book.
What I didn't enjoy was Gale's end. What happened to him? Oh, he's in District 2. And what's he doing in Distict 2?
How did he get there? Why did he go there? How does he feel about Katniss being with Peeta out of default, not either one's choice? What's he going to do with his life now?
Where is he going to live? I dunno. I also couldn't believe Katniss's trial just happened without us. What the heck? Katniss is moping and plotting her suicide gratuitously in her room in the Capitol, and then one day Haymitch wanders in and says, "Your trial's over.
You're free as a bird. She goes home and lives out the rest of her days as she pleases and her mother just buggers off too, like Gale did.
Where's your mom, Katniss? This whole thing felt like a sputtering fizzle-out of what really should have been a fantastic series. Part way through Catching Fire , I was considering that this series may even be literary, but Mockingjay spat on that. This is commercial YA, through and through.
Yeah, the strong message about war and the hopelessness of Katniss tries to cover it up, but it has everything: silly love triangle, cackling villain, and the fate of the world resting on a teenager's shoulders. What's that? Oh, yeah. This is silly. Katniss's Mockingjay role was equally silly. She doesn't care about the Mockingjay, or all the stupid TV spots they do, or anything really.
And then BAM! As did her constant use of arrows in futuristic combat. What is that? Since when was there an explosive that could fit on the head of an arrow and blow up an entire airship?
Why am I even trying to reason this? The bow and arrows did not have a place in the world of Mockingjay. It seemed overwhelmingly stupid for Katniss to still be using arrows, a prehistoric weapon, when everyone else around her was using firearms and bombs.
There's also the "sheath" business, which is just ridiculous. It literally takes 0. The writing in this book irritated me. The first hundred pages are almost comically boring, and the prose suffers under nonsensical fragments, run-on sentences and huge internal monologues in the middle of conversations. It's just damn hard to read. Mockingjay was such a flop for me. While the idea of exploring PTSD in war veterans was very interesting, it was employed in such a way that it brought the narrative in this book to a painful grind.
There was absolutely no hope left within Katniss, and her complete derailment just destroyed any hope left in the message of this book.
The writing was irritating, the deaths pointless, the violence totally over-the-top. Mockingjay was a great big depressing flop. Bonus Time!
View all 79 comments. Dec 27, Michelle rated it liked it. View all 52 comments. Feb 17, Kat Kennedy rated it it was amazing Shelves: to-ya-or-not-to-ya , kat-s-book-reviews , oppressive-dystopian-regime. This review has spoilers! What were you doing when you were 16? Checking your boobs each morning to see if the Boob Fairy had paid you a visit?
Sneaking out of the house to the park down the street where you and your six friends would share a single can of beer and pretend you're drunk?
Making out? Fighting with your parents? Watching scary movies? Katniss is sixteen years old and she's been in two Hunger Games, fighting against twenty-odd opponents to the death. Then she becom This review has spoilers! Then she becomes the symbol of the rebel leadership and helps overthrow an evil empire before she can legally drink. So I suppose it's really ridiculous of anyone to expect her capable of then going on to be president of this new world after everything she's been through.
Nobody would be evil enough to force that on her considering her fragile mental state Except me. But this is fantasy, right, it's not like children or teenagers are really capable of this much! It would be totally unrealistic of me to expect much more of Katniss considering all she's done Well, except for the cute little nine-year-old Htoo twins who lived in the Karen National Rebel camp when the enemy came and all the soldiers ran away leaving their AK's.
These two nine-year-olds thought it'd be a hoot to pick up a few guns and hold off the entire invading Burmese army And that would be a really cute story except for the fact that they went on to create their own army who were convinced that these two little chain-smokin' tykes had magical powers and were invincible. But I mean, they're a fluke! It's not like any other kids did great things. Well, unless you're counting Iqbal Masih who was made a slave at the age of five and chained to his loom for twelve hours a day.
Still, the little tyke managed to escape when he was ten so he only had to endure the first half of his life with unspeakable cruelty and torturous living conditions that left him unable to grow. Luckily, when he got out he ran off into the sunset and lived happily ever after. He didn't? Get off the computer you lazy little cow and go rescue some child slaves! At 12 years old my greatest achievement was not killing myself while I shaved my legs!
I wasn't going to mention St Joan of Arc because that comparison would be a little too easy but since I have time I'll just quietly mutter that she helped lead France to a number of tactical defeats in the Hundred Year's War, crowned a King and was Burned as a witch before she was nineteen years old.
But, no, it's too much to ask that Katniss step up into a role like that! After all, she had PTSD and she was traumatized. It would be evil for any adult to keep her on retainer as a figurehead to inspire the people. Which, by the way, if I were an adult in power in this particular world - I would totally do. But Katniss isn't the only one I'd keep to do my bidding. I'd keep Peeta around too.
And since I am only moderately evil and am actually very fond of Katniss and Peeta, I find the fact that they were allowed to go home and live out their quiet little lives peacefully to be very unrealistic.
In fact, it was the only really unrealistic thing in this novel and let's remember that I'm including genetically altered mutts and beams that can melt your skin off on that list!
So she did a little thing like shooting President Coin. Let's be realistic. Until a few days earlier, the Capitol didn't even know who President Coin was and every single district apart from 13 probably had never seen her. She has the personality of a dead fish left on hot concrete for three days that had been shat on - and the charisma to match! I doubt many of the residents of district 13 even held any great love for her! Most of the population of Panem was probably going to immediately assume that President Coin somehow had it coming.
After all, if Katniss shoots you - you probably did something bad. Something very, very bad! The election of Paynor was just ridiculous and unrealistic. You have a nation so fractured that it's fourteen different districts have never cooperated or worked or even really MET each other. Plus the fact that they're in economic collapse and dealing with the fallout of a costly war.
I just can't bring myself to believe that they wouldn't drug Katniss up, put her smiling face on stage and have some kind of deciding power working behind closed doors while Katniss waved happily to the smiling faces and kissed babies. It reminds me of that scene in Ender's Game when Ender is reminiscing about how he's just won the war as one of the greatest generals of recent history and suddenly, in the clean up effort, he's become useless because the adults don't think that the same leadership and skills it requires to lead an army, could also be useful to rebuild a world.
But Katniss and Peeta have the perfect matching set of skills to help put the world back together and they already have the love and trust of most of the population! I'm not saying they'd want to do it. I'm saying I doubt, realistically, that they'd have a choice in the matter. Now, apart from the ending - which I didn't mind, just was baffled by - I loved and adored this book. Peeta's hijacking was devestating, Katniss' mental breakdown was harrowing.
And everytime he was mentioned in the costuming etc I wanted to cry. The battles, the politics, it was all such an amazing novel and the end to an amazing series. I'm honestly in love with Suzanne Collins because she's such a brave writer. She's not scared to go to dark places and she's not scared to scar her characters up a bit.
Catching Fire and Mockingjay could never match the perfect pacing and brilliant plot of The Hunger Games but they're still amazing books full of suspense, action, great characterization and thoughtful dialogue. They reflect circumspectly on our society as Collin's asks us to see ourselves through the eyes of Katniss.
I've heard a little bit of mumbling about the relationship between Peeta and Katniss. It's interesting to bring up because I've heard the concept that Katniss doesn't deserve Peeta a lot.
Is she as patient, devoted and understanding of Peeta and he is of her? Absolutely not. Katniss regularly fails at patient and kind. I'd also highly doubt that this would come of any shock to Peeta.
He didn't fall in love with her not knowing who she was. He's watched her for years and he has ALWAYS been the one to feel more deeply, act unselfishly in her favor and to give more of himself.
That's who they are as a couple. Katniss on the other hand, I'm relieved to say, is a female character who isn't hung up on emotions and the postures of love. She loves Peeta enough to make herself sick and crazy at the thought of what's happening to him - but she's also a functional, strong person who has a job to do.
She's not like Bella who falls to pieces when Edward leaves. She can't afford to and she's never been one to sit around and obsess over how perfect Peeta's hair is or comment on his body like it's a marble statue. I guess what I'm saying is that if Peeta feels like he deserves Katniss and vice versa, then who am I to argue? So whilst I didn't satisfactorily buy the ending, I really loved this book and highly recommend this series - even if I had to out myeslf as an evil, plotting witch with political aspirations of taking over the world to do it!
I can't think of more horrible things to call her right now because I'm so angry at her! View all 84 comments. Aug 24, Jayna rated it it was ok. I was just thankful that I decided to be grown-up and not wait until midnight to get this book and then stay up all night reading it. I kindled it early this morning and ignored my kids for 4 hours and got through it. This book makes you realize how much the storyline in the first two depended upon the tension created by the love triangle.
In Mockingjay, the author robs her readers of what they I crave! By the end, everything is so messed up that Peeta vs. Gale became "OH snap. Who even cares anymore? I have to chalk this work up to "Twilight Syndrome" Bottom line: You have to read it, but don't spend money on it- wait and borrow it from your friend.
And then fondly recall the excellence of the first book. View all 48 comments.
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