Okay. Behind the times here, but I just devoured (sorry) the Hunger Games trilogy. And yeah, I loved it. The holes in world-building didn't bother me, really, only little pet peeves in the first book like for god's sake, Katniss, if you are dying of thirst chew on some leaves, ffs . And it didn't bother me that she spent so much of Mockingjay sedated and/or in closets . She lost much of her agency , true, but since so much of that agency was illusory, I didn't blame her for retreating . Clearly YMockingjayMV. I guessed that she was going to kill Coin , and it didn't strike me as giving up her one goal so much as giving up on revenge and ultimately rejecting her role as pawn of any administration. Plus, it was pretty obvious that Snow was going to die anyway . Katniss was never one for wasting an arrow . And yes, the ending to the whole thing was a bit of a cheat, but it bothered me much less than that of Harry Potter . Especially once I realized that Gale's prediction had come true; she had chosen the one of them who had what she couldn't live without - hope . Chilling, in its own way. Prim's death didn't bother me either (I mean, it devastated me, but narratively speaking; in a way, it reminded me of Anya's in that I didn't see it coming and it's always sudden and war doesn't know when to stop. . And I'm completely convinced that it was Gale's/Beetee's bomb, and Coin's order . Didn't Gale say that he didn't mind killing their spies who were in the Nut, for a larger purpose ?

I don't know. I'm not sure how coherent I'm being. I also want to make it clear that it's not that some people's objections are unfair, just trying to explain why they didn't bother me. I kind of think of the trilogy as sort of a mashup of Gladiator + Survivor + Lord of the Flies + random war movie and it worked for me. I dig flawed, unreliable, badass female narrators (see also: The Blue Place's Aud Torvingen). And given the waterboarding saga of the last several years, I find not sinking to the level of our enemies to be a still-relevant conversation .

I'll be interested to see what amyth thinks of it. I don't know how I'm going to watch the movies, though. I watched that fan-filmed scene of Katniss at Rue's death and nearly couldn't take it.

eta I find it funny that I got all the spoiler tags right, but managed to misspell Katniss.

Okay, I'm reading "Mark Reads The Hunger Games" and this bit from the review for Chapter 7 just elicited an actual bark of laughter from me:

well, I still don’t have a sense of whether or not Collins is actually going to kill anyone off yet.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Snerk. Boy, is he in for a ride.

smonster, your take is pretty similar to mine. The whole trilogy was gutting, and I sobbed more than once, but the choices she made in Mockingjay worked for me, for the most part.

What grabbed me and never let go, above and beyond world-building or other details, was Katniss. Her ferocity, her determination, but also the honest moments of WTF AM I DOING? and confusion and just being a girl in this world. At her heart, Katniss felt real to me, which made the read really emotional and really satisfying, even if it was grim as fuck.

Wow, I'm tired. Stupid typos.

Ha ha ha, yeah. Mark says some pretty hilariously prescient things sometimes. He's wished for so many things in his Avatar posts that he has no idea will come true, sometimes sooner than he thinks.

Amy, yes. And I've found many a love triangle to be tedious and eyerolly, but in my own life I've had a number of times where I had a hard time choosing between potential partners (and made some poor decisions), and I really liked that I honestly didn't know who Katniss would end up with, if anyone, and that both Peeta and Gale seemed to offer real, viable, but not perfect relationships .

A random Harry Potter thought has occurred to me.

Which is that the Dementors and everyone spend a lot of time during books 3, 4, and 5 running around looking for Sirius Black. And yet Harry is able to communicate with Sirius by owl, even when Harry doesn't know where Sirius is.

So clearly the owls all know where every member of the wizarding world is at every moment.

Why doesn't the Ministry of Magic follow the owls anytime someone goes missing?

Why doesn't the Ministry of Magic follow the owls anytime someone goes missing?

They do. Which is why Harry can't use Hedwig sometimes because she's so distinctive looking.

Yeah, but all the Ministry has to do is send an owl to Sirius, and follow their own owl!

smonster, now that it's 6+ months after reading Mockingjay, what has lingered the most, out of everything, is -- Finnick. I mean, GOD DAMN. He gets to marry Annie, and then gets killed more or less offscreen, just -- gone.

I mean, I should have seen it coming. Since he got that moment of awesome happiness in marrying Annie, OF COURSE shit was going to get real.

But GOD DAMN. Out of everything, including Prim's death, that has stuck with me the most.

Steph, I totally agree. Completely, totally brutal.