Last week, I read The Hunger Games Trilogy. For the most part I enjoyed it, the most part being the first two books. The last book, however, is a mess in many ways.
First of all, I’m not really sure that our POV character, Katnis, is really worth cheering for. At best, she’s a pawn, at worst she’s a bumbling fool. Secondly, I feel like the third book was rushed. The first two books setup this huge rebellion, but it feels like it was all crammed into one last book. Furthermore, it’s clear that Katnis, other than “inspiring people” is really unimportant to what happens. Most of the action scenes in the book end with her being knocked unconscious somehow and waking up in a hospital. All the main action of the rebellion happens off-screen.
I also never really felt the romance story was fulfilling. There was a love triangle in all three books, but the resolution of it mostly was Katnis choosing because he’s the guy that happened to be there. There never was a scene of a real choice.
Mockingjay suffers largely from telling where showing should have been. The most interesting things happen off camera and a lot of the book is the internal monologue of Katnis making zero decisions. I wish it would have ended better, because the first two books were quite good. I’d say it’s worth reading, but this series would have benefitted from more pages.