I was up unti 3:30 AM finishing The Hunger Games, which I could not put down. I agree with Teppy about the flaws of the books, but the book's quick pace and the cliffhangers that seem to end every chapter keeps me reading. Now, on to the next two books.

Just finished Mockingjay last night. Damn, Steph, you weren't kidding about the darkity darkness.

You know, after reading the first book, I was actually impressed with Collins' worldbuilding. I felt like she had really put a lot of thought into the implications, especially psychological, of the conditions she had created and the world she'd imagined. But now I'm a lot less sure about that. I feel like the story got away from her in the end -- that the smaller subject of the Hunger Games was more compelling and easier to convey than the larger subject of the rebellion and subsequent restructuring of the government and the lives of everyone in Panem. I don't necessarily think all books need to have a moral message or a point, exactly, but I did find myself at the end of the book wondering what I was supposed to take away from the story.

Also, all that talk about needing to keep people alive to perpetuate the human race seemed odd to me. Is Panem the only country on Earth now? Have all the other people all over the world died out? How? Why? I guess I thought we might get a little more backstory on how things got to this point, but now I'm more confused than ever about Panem's creation and position in the world.

I could probably go into a long litany now of things that bugged me about the book, but I did genuinely enjoy it while I was reading it. It's only now that it's over and I know how the story turned out -- and all those characters I cared about are either dead or incredibly psychologically scarred -- that I'm getting cranky about it. But, to give credit where it's due, Collins did do a great job of keeping me on my toes. I truly didn't know where the story might go for much of the book, who to trust, who to root for, who Katniss might choose in the end (though I think you're right, Suela, that in the end the choice was almost made for her, which was disappointing but did feel realistic).

Lots more to say about this one -- hurry up and finish it, everyone!

Oooh, got my shipping notification for Blameless!

Really? Time for me to go poke amazon.com with a stick, too, then.

They are reprinting the Bonnie books!

I still have my old paperbacks from when I was a kid.

Okay, my thoughts on Mockingjay, other than saying it's darkity dark:

I didn't read it in one setting; I read the first 60 or so pages at my first go, and was left thinking that (1) it was slooooow, and (2) that "oh, this is a Buffy/Frodo/Sam Beckett/choose your own unwilling hero scenario!" She doesn't want to be the Mockingjay, but kind of has to.

And I stand by that comparison (actually, I think that the end of Mockingjay is a lot like the end of RotK, in terms of the characters being home [District 12/the Shire] and being, basically, in shellshock after all the events of the story). But what I found so darkity dark about Mockingjay is that there is really no moment whatsoever where Katniss has any kind of triumph, however small. Even if it were a experiencing a feeling of joy or happiness at Finnick and Annie getting married [and don't get me started on Finnick getting killed -- god DAMN, couldn't *anyone* be spared?!?], that would have been a kind of emotional lifting above the unrelenting grinding horror Katniss was in.

The vengeful bitch goddess in me is PISSED that Katniss even got cheated out of killing President Snow. I get why she killed Coin, but there was no triumph for her in doing that. None.

And killing Prim? Seriously?!? Was that meant to indicate that Katniss' decision to take Prim's place in the first book was futile? Since ultimately Prim got killed anyway? And then I think, well, of course it wasn't. Because if Prim had gone to the Games in book 1, and been killed, there would have been no rebellion. But then I ask, was the rebellion "good"? And I think it WAS, on a grand scale, which is the way of such things. Just very costly. Which, again, is the way of such things.

Still, it felt to me that killing Prim was a step too much. That maybe Collins really did want to take all hope away from Katniss, but why do that to your protagonist? What message, exactly, are you trying to convey? (Other than WAR IS BAD? Because, yeah, we get that.) Life is pain, princess, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something? I mean, DAMN. That's where the darkity dark got too much for me.

On the Peeta vs. Gale thing: I admit that Collins really effectively made me change my mind on who I thought Katniss should be with. I was all in favor of Peeta, and was naive enough to not expect him to come back from the Capitol all brainwashed. And I figured after that, no matter how effectively Katniss *thought* he was deprogrammed, I would *never* trust him with her again. In fact, I was kind of expecting the ending to be him snapping her neck. Seriously. Of course, once Gale was all KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL, I was pretty much over that, too.

I stand by my first response:

Mockingjay left me really depressed. I didn't hate it though.

But I'll add a bit more to that.

I really didn't like how much time Katniss spent sedated and hiding in closets. She was a completely different person in this book, and I didn't really like this person. I felt sorry for her whereas in the previous two books, I loved her. I admired her courage and strength in those books.

I hated that the entire last mission, where so many people got killed, resulted in absolutely nothing.

Rayne, those things bugged me a lot too. It seemed like half the book consisted of Katniss lying around in the hospital and/or hiding out in closets while lots of important things happened offstage. Too many scenes of someone else coming in and explaining all the major things that happened while Katniss was unconscious. And then she doesn't even get to kill Snow -- her main objective for the whole book, and a goal for which many people died horribly! (I probably took Finnick's death hardest of all. By the time Prim died, it was all just too much to take in, but Finnick's death took me by surprise, and I thought the descriptions of all the images that had made up his life -- the sea, Annie in her wedding dress -- were lovely and touching. Sniff.)

Also, what did you all think about Katniss voting yes in the meeting about whether or not to have a final Hunger Games? I really wasn't sure what to make of it. The only way I can rationalize it is if that's the moment when she makes up her mind to kill Coin instead of Snow, and so she doesn't really mean it. But either way, if she's about to kill Coin, the Hunger Games won't go on anyway, right? So that's still not a really compelling reason to vote yes. Seemed like that decision was more about shock value than the character herself.

Kate, I thought that Katniss voted for the new Hunger Games because that moment made her realize that the new government (or, at least, Coin and those allied with her) were no better than the old government.

I just checked my book, and in that scene, right before Katniss votes, the narration says, "All those people I loved, dead, and we are discussing the next Hunger Games in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now." (Emphasis mine.)

That scene was just prior to what was supposed to be Snow's execution. I think what happened was Katniss finally realized that Coin's government was going to be no better than Snow's, and that's when she decided to kill Coin. I think voting yes was an attempt to make Coin think that she (Katniss) was finally starting to support the new government, because if Coin suspected that Katniss was opposed, she would have had Katniss killed, or at least changed the execution such that it wouldn't be Katniss up there on the stage with a bow and arrow in her hand. Because Coin never made a secret of the fact that Katniss was useless to her government once Katniss fulfilled the role of uniting the districts against the Capitol. Since Katniss survived the fire at the end, I think Coin let her live for the time being because of public perception. But I don't think if Coin lived, Katniss would have lived very much longer.

Ah, Steph, that does make sense. I figured there had to be some purpose to her ploy, but hadn't put that together with Coin's perception of Katniss as a threat. Thank you!

Well, after Katniss "voted," Haymitch was next to vote, and her narration says "This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me." To me that says (1) that there was something to her vote that Haymitch had to understand (versus it being a plain old "yes" vote), and (2) that her vote was calculated in order to pull something off, because she wanted Haymitch to understand it -- remember, he was a fairly big stealthy planner of sneaky shit (i.e., working with the rebels during the Quarter Quell to get the tributes out of the arena, but not telling Katniss). If you want someone sneaky to understand what you're doing, that implies that you're doing something sneaky, too.