I just finished the Hunger Games trilogy. I mainlined the whole thing in the course of about 4 days. I found the ending appropriate but depressing. I think I would have felt better about the ending if we had had a scene with Katniss and Peeta coming together again, instead of reading about it in an epilogue. I was really messed up over what was done to Peeta. It is probably wrong to feel this way, but in some ways I feel like that was one of the worst things done in the books.

I would have preferred more closure in some areas and I agree with discussion above that there needed to be a bit more description from Katniss regarding her final dramatic act. I think that her voting for another round of Hunger Games coupled with her assassination of Coin seem like contradictory acts to me. Why vote for it when it wouldn't have made a difference.

How are they going to film this thing? I bet they will change the ending.

le nubian, Katniss voted for it to make Coin think she was on her side. Haymitch realized what she was doing and went along with it. Haymitch knew that Katniss would never TRULY vote for another fucking Hunger Games, having gone through two in a row, so he knew she was up to something. If Katniss had voted against it and made waves, Coin could have dropped her from the Snow execution or, well, had her disposed of some other way. We already knew she considered her a threat. I'll agree that it wasn't entirely clear, though.

How are they going to film this thing?

Seriously.

I bet they will change the ending.

They're going to have to do something to keep the movies PG-13.

P-C,

okay, your explanation makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I have a feeling I was speed reading at that point, so I might not have absorbed everything properly.

No, I felt the same way. I read it over and over to see whether I'd missed something. It's somewhat of a cheat in the first-person POV, but not entirely. Katniss does withhold her motivations from the reader, but she does not lie. You have to read between the lines.

Oh, and I agree that what happened with Peeta was horrible. I never expected that, and I was afraid that there would be no semblance of a happy ending at all.

The whole thing was really horrible. I cannot believe Coin thought it was okay to put him in the same troop as Katniss. So not only didn't she want Katniss to come back, but anyone who served with her as well - since Peeta showed violence to all kinds of people.

I felt like I was speeding through the end of Mockingjay, too, and it took me a minute to get a handle on what was happening.

For me, the ending was the only possible semi-happy one given what happened to Peeta and it was enough for me, to see what Katniss was seeing on that last page.

I have no idea how they're going to make the *games* part of the movies, without a whole lot of expensive CGI.

I would have preferred Peeta being more like Johanna (damaged, but not programmed to be a lethal killer) than what he was, but oh well.

Man, I still can't buy it as a "happy" ending, because I just expect Peeta to go all Manchurian Candidate at any moment.

I feel much the same way, Steph.

And, while what the Capitol did to Peeta is pretty fucking horrific, for some reason the worst thing for me was Finnick's death, after he had just gotten to marry Annie. And I know that wasn't specifically planned the way Peeta's hijacking was (meaning, the scenario in which Finnick was killed wasn't designed specifically for Finnick; it was just general evil Capitol bullshit.

Somehow Finnick's death was way more emotionally wrenching for me than Peeta's hijacking.