Mockingjay

Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay was one of the first books I read this year, and I think I waited so long to review it because I have absolutely no idea where to begin.

To say this series blew me a way is an understatement. And don't even get me started on how it's classified as a YOUNG ADULT series. I mean, seriously?!

I'm ashamed to admit that I actually forgot I hadn't finished the Hunger Games series until something unmemorable triggered my mom-brain memory (as in, I have none), and Mer gasped and said, "You still haven't read that?! I'm bringing my book over right now so you can finish it. The third is absolutely my favorite." And she wasn't wrong; in my book of books, the final installment of the Hunger Games was absolutely the best, most worth the effort, and second easiest to plow through behind the first. Finally, everything I had hoped for in the first and expected in the second, was finally happening in the third.

Completely unaware of the goings-on behind the scenes, Katniss miraculously escapes her second Hunger Games on the side of the "good guys." Or did she...? Peeta has been captured by the Capitol to be used as a pawn in these larger-than-the-Hunger-Games games, and Gale is weird and distant, a far cry from the one person she could count on and trust. Expecting and motivated to hit the front lines of the now-emerged civil war, Katniss' role in the unrest is largely trophy-ish, a symbol used by the rebels to remember what they're fighting for. As the reader, I had hoped for more scenes from the fighting but that doesn't mean everything Katniss was up to wasn't heart-palpitating and breath-taking and, well, game-changing.

Reading this reminded me a lot of what Mer said about Game of Thrones; the good guys are the bad guys, the bad guys are the good guys, and you never know which is which, even as the story nears a dramatic and horrifying end. If nothing else, this story shines a bright light on the inter workings of war, the evil that is at the heart, and the coming together of people who believe they deserve better for themselves. And, if nothing else, provides a clear warning message for our future.

In general, stories of the post-apocalyptic nature provide us with a waning self-assurance of, that will never happen to us/our country/our world. But I firmly believe the Hunger Games provides more of a foreshadowing then we care to admit, taking into account the large consumption of reality TV we can't steer clear of, and the large degree of human suffering we find it easy to turn our heads away from. The way our current media sensationalizes every gruesome crime is the major foundation to our own Hunger Games, I just hope we never start to fear our power-hungry government more than we hate them.