Happy 2016, friends! The much delayed continuation of our Belgium Travelogue will resume soon. As usual, it's been difficult for me to stay indoors.
I blame the ski slopes, mountain peaks, and the trails.
I blame the ski slopes, mountain peaks, and the trails.
This spoiler-free and plot-free review of “Hunger Games: Mockingjay” will also be featured on my Goodreads page soon.
After reading a book or book series, I rarely get around to
watching any movie adaption it spawns. The
film rarely measures up to the book anyway.
I may make an exception with the Hunger Games series, though. The immense popularity of Suzanne Collins’
Katniss Everdeen trilogy drew me to this saga, and the first two books lived up
to the hype.
“Mockingjay,” the last and bleakest of the Hunger Games trilogy, is enjoyable but also a bit of a letdown.
The end game of the character arcs are disappointing across the board. Katniss devolves from the fiercely
independent heroine of the Hunger Games to a self-absorbed, depressed, and drug
dependent pawn of opposing political systems. Other main characters whom readers have invested
in throughout the trilogy are given abrupt sendoffs (i.e., gruesome and often
meaningless deaths, unceremonial dismissals, etc.) that almost seem tacked on as
afterthoughts. Even the outcome of the
requisite Young Adult love triangle seems inconsistent with the characters’
journeys which preceded it.
I'm all for realism in storytelling... But the guarded
hope of books #1 and #2 is replaced by a dreary tone of despair, with few
glimpses of optimism for the human condition.
Neither of the two sequels (the second book being “Catching Fire”) could possibly live up to the female empowerment and engrossing originality of the “Hunger Games” series
opener. That being said, “Mockingjay”
provides an exciting, if not completely satisfying, conclusion.
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