Mockingjay, the thrilling conclusion to Suzanne Collins' best-selling, highly-acclaimed The Hunger Games trilogy, was published last Tuesday, finally ending the anticipation for thousands of fans. The book has already spent more than 200 days on Amazon's bestseller list. Now that it has actually been published, it is expected to remain in the No. 1 spot for weeks to come.
Mockingjay, a dystopian novel reminiscent of the Japanese film Battle Royale, is set in the future, after our civilization has been wiped out. Where the United States once existed is now the nation of Panem, ruled by the dictatorial Capitol. Every year, the Capitol forces each of Panem's 12 districts to send two children, one male and one female, to play in the Hunger Games, a gladiator-style battle that is televised for the amusement of the masses. These children, called tributes, are not only forced to kill each other, they are also made over, paraded through the streets of the Capitol and treated like movie stars before being forced into highly imaginative, brutal deaths. By marrying the deadly games with Hollywood culture, the series critiques reality-show lifestyle and depicts the importance of appearance rather than substance in a shallow Panem society that has more than just echoes of our own.
In the first book of the trilogy, The Hunger Games, our protagonist Katniss survives the brutal Hunger Games by both killing others and by faking an on-screen romance with fellow tribute Peeta. The second book, Catching Fire, brings the story out of the arena and into a power struggle that has implications for both Katniss's life and the future of her country. She becomes the de facto symbol of the rebellion that springs up against the Capitol. Now, in Mockingjay, Katniss must decide whether to embrace her influential role, and her decisions expand on and explore themes touched upon in The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.
Mockingjay is not the perfect end to the trilogy. The sloppy copyediting that has plagued the books from the start was irritating and distracting to the reader. (Come on, Scholastic.) The brutal deaths, which pile up quickly in Mockingjay, begin to assume a laundry-list quality, forgoing emotional impact. Peeta, Katniss's constant companion from the start of the trilogy and my favorite character, is reduced to a cold shadow of his former self. Yes, Peeta's character change drives home the anti-war message of the book - that everyone, even the selfless Peeta, becomes despicable under the duress of war. It makes, however, for painful reading.
But my quibbles vanished in light of the overall impact of this final installment. Unlike most young adult books, Mockingjay, much to my satisfaction, does not wrap the plot threads up into a neat little bow: Katniss, damaged beyond repair, wanders the corridors of the rebel base, hiding in closets and cupboards, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; characters' true loyalties and passions, often disturbing, are revealed; the deaths pile up with disquieting alacrity. And the love triangle among Katniss, Peeta and Gale, her best friend, played out with a surprising lack of melodrama to become a romance that is simultaneously heartbreaking and realistic.\nMockingjay, then, is a triumph. Its epilogue recalls the one that ended Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but does not leave us with Harry's feel-good ending. We are left with a Katniss who survives by playing a game: continuously listing "every act of goodness I've ever seen" in a repetitive attempt to erase the past. And if that seems too depressing, Katniss reminds us in a stunning clincher that "there are much worse games to play"
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