heather11483 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
heathershaped) wrote2010-09-02 02:31 pm
heathershaped) wrote2010-09-02 02:31 pm
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that time i read the Hunger Games trilogy in like three days, part deux
I was going to post this sooner but then... I didn't! Anyway.
Such mixed feelings. Also tl;dr, lol.
So basically Collins ended up telling a different story than she seemed to be telling in the beginning of the series? I mean, that’s kind of how I felt about it. It goes from a story about revolution to a story about the mental and emotional toll of war, to varying degrees of success. Literally halfway through the whole series, SC changes the trajectory drastically, and slowly, methodically, sucks all the hope out of everything and everyone. Then... doesn't spend enough time building it back up. Which would be fine, happy endings aren't always necessary, but then she obviously DID want the ending to be hopeful, and just didn't spend much time developing that.
Which led to some moments where I was questioning the point. Because there should be a point, right? Sometimes things really are that bad, but I don’t want to feel completely numb at the end of a story, and I did. That’s not the kind of thing that makes me sit back and marvel at how deep something is. It’s been a few days and I still don’t know if I loved it or not. Though parts of it, I definitely loved.
Let me back up and talk about those first.
Katnizzle. I know I’m being repetitive at this point, but I loved Katniss and I cried for her at multiple points. Like I said in my last post, I think it was a brave decision for Collins not to put Katniss on the front lines of the war or in a leader role, much as I love those stories too. It was never what she wanted anyway. And making her a more passive part of the resistance/rebellion led to some frustrating moments while reading because there were things I really really wanted to see that we were only told about? But the thing is, Katniss still had agency, was still brave and smart and driven. Just in a different way than I think anyone expected her to have to be. She kept her eye on the ultimate goal, she pushed forward through unimaginable pain, she strategized when the game was stacked against her from both sides, and she is still the one who saves the world in the end. From Snow AND the rebel leader.
Just because she nearly falls apart, just because she hides in closets, just because she spends 70% of the book in a state of severe trauma and PTSD that I don’t think anyone could blame her for, doesn’t mean she wasn’t strong. Which brings me to my next point.
Taking out Coin. District 13 creeped me out from the start. It was the best chance for rebellion but it was like a mirror image of the Capitol. Maybe that rigid structure was what was needed to keep the place self-sustainable for so long with limited resources and a growing population, but Coin was always going to end up like Snow. Katniss saw it coming and put a stop to it -- and saved the world. I think that moment when she realized she needed to stop the thing she’d been fighting against from happening again, and then seizing that last-moment chance to do it by twitching her arrow up and killing Coin was so perfectly in character. It reminded me of that scene when she was training to join the sharpshooters’ unit and she saw the barrel of explosives that could’ve taken out the peacekeepers all at once, but decided to follow orders instead so that she could get to the Capitol? This time she trusted herself and did it her own way. Loved that.
Katniss/Peeta. Even though I grasped the inevitability of it from very early on and was generally on board, strangely they didn’t win me over completely as a romance until the final book, and apparently it took them both being damaged near-beyond repair for that to happen. Not sure what that says about me, haha. I think in the first two books, for me they were never quite on the same wavelength. He was way ahead of her in terms of romantic feelings, and she was always feeling like she needed to catch up whether she was ready for it or not (and it was strongly repeatedly emphasized that she wasn’t), either for the cameras or because she felt she owed him. But even though Peeta’s hijacking and the amount of pain they put each other through was gutwrenching, MJ kind of put them into alignment. I don’t know how to explain but there was a point where Katniss could choose to stick with him or let him go, and I kind of like that she DID let him go at first, and that he stayed in her thoughts because she loves him, not just because she was feeling guilty. And by the end they were so broken it seemed right that they would just quietly move forward together. They’re such different people than they were before but they still had each other. I also like that there was no elaborate scene; it was just organic.
There’s also something kind of lovely in the fact that after a whole series with each of them saving the other one by turns, in the end they save each other and put each other back together again. And the real/not real game = LOVE.
Gale. I can’t say the end of this friendship made me happy, but it made sense. I don’t think Gale/Katniss was ever going to happen, I think most of her confusion over him was out of a need to be those same kids they were in 12. But in the end they couldn’t be, because 12 is gone, and he went in a direction she couldn’t follow, and they’d both changed so much. The only thing I didn’t like was that Prim’s death was so much a part of their parting. It didn’t feel necessary and it made Gale seem a little cold to describe protecting her family as the only thing he had going for him compared to Peeta.
Finnick and Johanna FINNICK. <3 I was a little sad that he started this book having had kind of a breakdown, but it was understandable and I liked seeing him come back to himself over the course of the book. I’m not sure what to think about Annie, I don’t think she had enough development, but I love Finnick so much. His spirit, his sense of humour, his swagger. How he and Katniss relate to each other and help each other in different ways. And as much as I love Finnick I love Johanna even more. Just clever and snarky and PERFECTION. I don’t know who I ship her with more - Katniss, Gale, or me.
They both broke my heart though, between Finnick’s backstory and Johanna’s PTSD... gah.
Non-romantic relationships. These were all aces! Katniss has a lot of varied interactions and I love them all. She had some substantial scenes with Prim which I thought was missing from CF. That solid friendship with Finnick, the daughterly one with Boggs. And Katniss-Haymitch is a constant pleasure, even when they’re at each others’ throats, because they’re so alike and they both know it. I loved the moment when Coin proposed the second Hunger Games and he supported Kat when she agreed to it. Personally I almost had to stop reading because I was so full of rage and WTF IS THIS BOOK, but later it clicked that that was the moment where she decided Coin had to die, and Haymitch was the only one in the room who understood the plan without her having to explain.
I think my favorite friendship was Katniss-Johanna though, because it was so hard-won and satisfying. The part where they train together is one of my favorite parts of the whole series. When Johanna’s trauma with the water came out and Katniss gathered those pine needles for her I nearly lost it. OH GIRLS. <3
Peeta as The Girl. HEAR ME OUT OKAY. It's just, how many things have I read or watched that were all about this dude who loves this girl, whose storyline revolves around keeping her safe? And then the antagonist of the story gets his hands on said girl and uses her against the dude, to break him if you will, and said girl becomes the thing that drives said dude’s rage and grief and pain and spurs him into action? And so said girl becomes one of the many plot devices used to plumb said dude’s characterization, in a story which is all about his pain, his rage, his feelings from his perspective? (The answer is many; I have read/seen many things like this.)
...I’m just saying, a certain someone bears a striking resemblance to said girl in the context of this series.
NOT TO REDUCE PEETA TO A DEVICE OR ANYTHING, because it’s far more complicated than that and he’s been a character in his own right. A character I love. But it did subvert a lot of annoying girl-in-the-refrigerator tropes. Can’t say it doesn’t warm my heart.
What didn’t work so well for me:
Rush-job. It wouldn’t have been so noticeable if Collins hadn’t spent so much time describing the smallest of scenes in the first two books, but MJ just felt so rushed in spots. In important spots. And where there wasn’t rushing, there was exposition-dumping. Almost like she could’ve extended the book by a few chapters and been good to go. The ending really suffered for this. After taking almost everyone away from Katniss and leaving her a hollowed-out shell of herself by the end, Collins should’ve focused more on rebuilding that sense of hope that would’ve made everything that happened worth it. Instead she just kind of summarizes it and it didn’t have the same emotional effect for me. Rather than feeling hopeful when the book ended I was still numb.
POV. We’re still 100% in Katniss’ head and unable to see a full picture of what’s happening. I think that worked well for THG, less so for CF, but it was often frustrating in MJ. Almost every action scene abruptly cuts away to find Katniss in the hospital, reeling, followed by a summary of what went down while she was out. And almost every time, this was really jarring to read. I can tell that was deliberate, to disorient us as Katniss was disoriented, but it read as clunky to me.
Out like an extra. Finnick deserved a much better ending than he got. (If he had to die at all, which I maintain he did not.) From that point in the story I started to go numb. It wasn’t that I thought he was a safe character; I knew someone special had to die, but barely a paragraph? One minute he’s there and the next he’s decapitated in a sewer, and sorry but Katniss randomly seeing HIS life flash before her eyes or whatever that was? Made no sense and was also lazy.
Everything’s better with babies? The epilogue wasn’t as bad as JKR’s by a long shot, plus it was a lot shorter, but for me this would’ve been better shaved off and the final chapters extended a bit to include more closure for the other characters and Katniss/Peeta. I do get it, totally - Kat finally agrees to have children after being afraid to consider it for fear they might have to go to the Games. It’s kind of full-circle and meant to be a happy ending. But again, throughout the books it was something she did not want and you know, not having kids is a valid life choice. Happy endings can exist without babies, especially when the protagonist doesn’t seem to want them. Maybe it's just because of the rushed way it was written, but it seemed like she did it for him rather than because it was what she wanted. The fact that Peeta had to wear her down for 15 years and then she finally goes through two pregnancies that were hell for her, but then once she held her kids it was all good... idk. Made me uncomfortable. I ended up loving that Katniss and Peeta found some kind of peace together, but the babies seemed unnecessary.
Main reason it doesn’t work for me is that by Katniss breaking down and doing these things for Peeta, it became an implicit part of her healing, and not wanting kids shouldn’t necessarily be something that needs to be fixed. Part of this is Collins’ characterization of Katniss; she went way too hard with Katniss’ indifference to marriage and children than I think she was intending. Collins oversold it, and I guess I believed it too much to buy the turnaround. And ultimately, while it wasn't a dealbreaker I’d have been more than fine without it.
Parts that left me numb:
PRIM. When the second parachutes blew I literally had to put the book down (and I think I actually messaged![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
peopleareshapes to tell her that I could barely go on, lol), not because I was crying yet, but because it was too much to take. I don’t know if I’ll ever be over it. Seriously y’all, it was already harrowing enough. It was a corral full of children, standing amidst pieces of other children, screaming. Kat was on her way to confront Snow. Everyone else in her crew missing or dead. There was more than enough at stake without bringing Prim into it, and it was just so abrupt, too: a flash of yellow braid and a duck tail (THE DUCK TAIL) and that was it. To say I was gutted? UNDERSTATEMENT. When I picked up the book again I legit kept reading for pages and pages stupidly hoping that Prim had somehow survived.
It’s just. Prim was the reason for everything. She was Kat’s reason for everything - from the very first chapter of the first book. To me Prim signified hope and a future and everything Kat was fighting for, and I never, EVER expected that she would die. Completely unprepared - I thought she out of everyone would be safe, because what even is the point otherwise? In a way Kat had ALREADY lost her when she lost Rue. I seriously don’t think I’ll ever reconcile Prim’s death as necessary to the plot, like many of the deaths in the first two books were.
The scene with Buttercup was beautiful, though. I cried big ugly tears, haha.
Madge. She was a minor character, but she was sweet and Katniss’ friend, and reading about her death at the end just felt like too much. There were all manner of ways she could’ve survived; at that point Collins was just rubbing the salt in, and worse it added no more depth to the story. Just left me even more numb. I read another review that said Collins was mistaking immense tragedy for depth, and here is where I think I felt that the most. IDK MAYBE I JUST WANTED HER TO LIVE AND END UP WITH GALE.
So yeah, overall I thought this book was devastating and nothing like I expected. It’s clear the story Collins wanted to tell was one about war, how emotionally and mentally devastating it can be. And while she told that story (and drove the point home over and over and over and over and....), she also dropped the ball on a lot of the other things she set up in the books, didn’t balance it out very well with the other story she was telling about the revolution. I FEEL.
Such mixed feelings. Also tl;dr, lol.
So basically Collins ended up telling a different story than she seemed to be telling in the beginning of the series? I mean, that’s kind of how I felt about it. It goes from a story about revolution to a story about the mental and emotional toll of war, to varying degrees of success. Literally halfway through the whole series, SC changes the trajectory drastically, and slowly, methodically, sucks all the hope out of everything and everyone. Then... doesn't spend enough time building it back up. Which would be fine, happy endings aren't always necessary, but then she obviously DID want the ending to be hopeful, and just didn't spend much time developing that.
Which led to some moments where I was questioning the point. Because there should be a point, right? Sometimes things really are that bad, but I don’t want to feel completely numb at the end of a story, and I did. That’s not the kind of thing that makes me sit back and marvel at how deep something is. It’s been a few days and I still don’t know if I loved it or not. Though parts of it, I definitely loved.
Let me back up and talk about those first.
Katnizzle. I know I’m being repetitive at this point, but I loved Katniss and I cried for her at multiple points. Like I said in my last post, I think it was a brave decision for Collins not to put Katniss on the front lines of the war or in a leader role, much as I love those stories too. It was never what she wanted anyway. And making her a more passive part of the resistance/rebellion led to some frustrating moments while reading because there were things I really really wanted to see that we were only told about? But the thing is, Katniss still had agency, was still brave and smart and driven. Just in a different way than I think anyone expected her to have to be. She kept her eye on the ultimate goal, she pushed forward through unimaginable pain, she strategized when the game was stacked against her from both sides, and she is still the one who saves the world in the end. From Snow AND the rebel leader.
Just because she nearly falls apart, just because she hides in closets, just because she spends 70% of the book in a state of severe trauma and PTSD that I don’t think anyone could blame her for, doesn’t mean she wasn’t strong. Which brings me to my next point.
Taking out Coin. District 13 creeped me out from the start. It was the best chance for rebellion but it was like a mirror image of the Capitol. Maybe that rigid structure was what was needed to keep the place self-sustainable for so long with limited resources and a growing population, but Coin was always going to end up like Snow. Katniss saw it coming and put a stop to it -- and saved the world. I think that moment when she realized she needed to stop the thing she’d been fighting against from happening again, and then seizing that last-moment chance to do it by twitching her arrow up and killing Coin was so perfectly in character. It reminded me of that scene when she was training to join the sharpshooters’ unit and she saw the barrel of explosives that could’ve taken out the peacekeepers all at once, but decided to follow orders instead so that she could get to the Capitol? This time she trusted herself and did it her own way. Loved that.
Katniss/Peeta. Even though I grasped the inevitability of it from very early on and was generally on board, strangely they didn’t win me over completely as a romance until the final book, and apparently it took them both being damaged near-beyond repair for that to happen. Not sure what that says about me, haha. I think in the first two books, for me they were never quite on the same wavelength. He was way ahead of her in terms of romantic feelings, and she was always feeling like she needed to catch up whether she was ready for it or not (and it was strongly repeatedly emphasized that she wasn’t), either for the cameras or because she felt she owed him. But even though Peeta’s hijacking and the amount of pain they put each other through was gutwrenching, MJ kind of put them into alignment. I don’t know how to explain but there was a point where Katniss could choose to stick with him or let him go, and I kind of like that she DID let him go at first, and that he stayed in her thoughts because she loves him, not just because she was feeling guilty. And by the end they were so broken it seemed right that they would just quietly move forward together. They’re such different people than they were before but they still had each other. I also like that there was no elaborate scene; it was just organic.
There’s also something kind of lovely in the fact that after a whole series with each of them saving the other one by turns, in the end they save each other and put each other back together again. And the real/not real game = LOVE.
Gale. I can’t say the end of this friendship made me happy, but it made sense. I don’t think Gale/Katniss was ever going to happen, I think most of her confusion over him was out of a need to be those same kids they were in 12. But in the end they couldn’t be, because 12 is gone, and he went in a direction she couldn’t follow, and they’d both changed so much. The only thing I didn’t like was that Prim’s death was so much a part of their parting. It didn’t feel necessary and it made Gale seem a little cold to describe protecting her family as the only thing he had going for him compared to Peeta.
Finnick and Johanna FINNICK. <3 I was a little sad that he started this book having had kind of a breakdown, but it was understandable and I liked seeing him come back to himself over the course of the book. I’m not sure what to think about Annie, I don’t think she had enough development, but I love Finnick so much. His spirit, his sense of humour, his swagger. How he and Katniss relate to each other and help each other in different ways. And as much as I love Finnick I love Johanna even more. Just clever and snarky and PERFECTION. I don’t know who I ship her with more - Katniss, Gale, or me.
They both broke my heart though, between Finnick’s backstory and Johanna’s PTSD... gah.
Non-romantic relationships. These were all aces! Katniss has a lot of varied interactions and I love them all. She had some substantial scenes with Prim which I thought was missing from CF. That solid friendship with Finnick, the daughterly one with Boggs. And Katniss-Haymitch is a constant pleasure, even when they’re at each others’ throats, because they’re so alike and they both know it. I loved the moment when Coin proposed the second Hunger Games and he supported Kat when she agreed to it. Personally I almost had to stop reading because I was so full of rage and WTF IS THIS BOOK, but later it clicked that that was the moment where she decided Coin had to die, and Haymitch was the only one in the room who understood the plan without her having to explain.
I think my favorite friendship was Katniss-Johanna though, because it was so hard-won and satisfying. The part where they train together is one of my favorite parts of the whole series. When Johanna’s trauma with the water came out and Katniss gathered those pine needles for her I nearly lost it. OH GIRLS. <3
Peeta as The Girl. HEAR ME OUT OKAY. It's just, how many things have I read or watched that were all about this dude who loves this girl, whose storyline revolves around keeping her safe? And then the antagonist of the story gets his hands on said girl and uses her against the dude, to break him if you will, and said girl becomes the thing that drives said dude’s rage and grief and pain and spurs him into action? And so said girl becomes one of the many plot devices used to plumb said dude’s characterization, in a story which is all about his pain, his rage, his feelings from his perspective? (The answer is many; I have read/seen many things like this.)
...I’m just saying, a certain someone bears a striking resemblance to said girl in the context of this series.
NOT TO REDUCE PEETA TO A DEVICE OR ANYTHING, because it’s far more complicated than that and he’s been a character in his own right. A character I love. But it did subvert a lot of annoying girl-in-the-refrigerator tropes. Can’t say it doesn’t warm my heart.
What didn’t work so well for me:
Rush-job. It wouldn’t have been so noticeable if Collins hadn’t spent so much time describing the smallest of scenes in the first two books, but MJ just felt so rushed in spots. In important spots. And where there wasn’t rushing, there was exposition-dumping. Almost like she could’ve extended the book by a few chapters and been good to go. The ending really suffered for this. After taking almost everyone away from Katniss and leaving her a hollowed-out shell of herself by the end, Collins should’ve focused more on rebuilding that sense of hope that would’ve made everything that happened worth it. Instead she just kind of summarizes it and it didn’t have the same emotional effect for me. Rather than feeling hopeful when the book ended I was still numb.
POV. We’re still 100% in Katniss’ head and unable to see a full picture of what’s happening. I think that worked well for THG, less so for CF, but it was often frustrating in MJ. Almost every action scene abruptly cuts away to find Katniss in the hospital, reeling, followed by a summary of what went down while she was out. And almost every time, this was really jarring to read. I can tell that was deliberate, to disorient us as Katniss was disoriented, but it read as clunky to me.
Out like an extra. Finnick deserved a much better ending than he got. (If he had to die at all, which I maintain he did not.) From that point in the story I started to go numb. It wasn’t that I thought he was a safe character; I knew someone special had to die, but barely a paragraph? One minute he’s there and the next he’s decapitated in a sewer, and sorry but Katniss randomly seeing HIS life flash before her eyes or whatever that was? Made no sense and was also lazy.
Everything’s better with babies? The epilogue wasn’t as bad as JKR’s by a long shot, plus it was a lot shorter, but for me this would’ve been better shaved off and the final chapters extended a bit to include more closure for the other characters and Katniss/Peeta. I do get it, totally - Kat finally agrees to have children after being afraid to consider it for fear they might have to go to the Games. It’s kind of full-circle and meant to be a happy ending. But again, throughout the books it was something she did not want and you know, not having kids is a valid life choice. Happy endings can exist without babies, especially when the protagonist doesn’t seem to want them. Maybe it's just because of the rushed way it was written, but it seemed like she did it for him rather than because it was what she wanted. The fact that Peeta had to wear her down for 15 years and then she finally goes through two pregnancies that were hell for her, but then once she held her kids it was all good... idk. Made me uncomfortable. I ended up loving that Katniss and Peeta found some kind of peace together, but the babies seemed unnecessary.
Main reason it doesn’t work for me is that by Katniss breaking down and doing these things for Peeta, it became an implicit part of her healing, and not wanting kids shouldn’t necessarily be something that needs to be fixed. Part of this is Collins’ characterization of Katniss; she went way too hard with Katniss’ indifference to marriage and children than I think she was intending. Collins oversold it, and I guess I believed it too much to buy the turnaround. And ultimately, while it wasn't a dealbreaker I’d have been more than fine without it.
Parts that left me numb:
PRIM. When the second parachutes blew I literally had to put the book down (and I think I actually messaged
peopleareshapes to tell her that I could barely go on, lol), not because I was crying yet, but because it was too much to take. I don’t know if I’ll ever be over it. Seriously y’all, it was already harrowing enough. It was a corral full of children, standing amidst pieces of other children, screaming. Kat was on her way to confront Snow. Everyone else in her crew missing or dead. There was more than enough at stake without bringing Prim into it, and it was just so abrupt, too: a flash of yellow braid and a duck tail (THE DUCK TAIL) and that was it. To say I was gutted? UNDERSTATEMENT. When I picked up the book again I legit kept reading for pages and pages stupidly hoping that Prim had somehow survived.It’s just. Prim was the reason for everything. She was Kat’s reason for everything - from the very first chapter of the first book. To me Prim signified hope and a future and everything Kat was fighting for, and I never, EVER expected that she would die. Completely unprepared - I thought she out of everyone would be safe, because what even is the point otherwise? In a way Kat had ALREADY lost her when she lost Rue. I seriously don’t think I’ll ever reconcile Prim’s death as necessary to the plot, like many of the deaths in the first two books were.
The scene with Buttercup was beautiful, though. I cried big ugly tears, haha.
Madge. She was a minor character, but she was sweet and Katniss’ friend, and reading about her death at the end just felt like too much. There were all manner of ways she could’ve survived; at that point Collins was just rubbing the salt in, and worse it added no more depth to the story. Just left me even more numb. I read another review that said Collins was mistaking immense tragedy for depth, and here is where I think I felt that the most. IDK MAYBE I JUST WANTED HER TO LIVE AND END UP WITH GALE.
So yeah, overall I thought this book was devastating and nothing like I expected. It’s clear the story Collins wanted to tell was one about war, how emotionally and mentally devastating it can be. And while she told that story (and drove the point home over and over and over and over and....), she also dropped the ball on a lot of the other things she set up in the books, didn’t balance it out very well with the other story she was telling about the revolution. I FEEL.
no subject
2. after being afraid to consider it for fear they might have to go to the Games. I don't think that's entirely what she was afraid of. I think she was afraid of trying to raise a child having had to raise herself with a traumatized mother, having all this attachment crap that's so messed up (because any 17 year old that carries in her head a list of people for whose death she is responsible? And it turns out half of them are people she loved? Yeah.), and I think she was afraid of the knowledge that if she was as damaged as she feared in that regard, she would have to tell the child, eventually, that it's not the child's fault, but hers. That the child is the child of murderers and sociopaths. Which, not that I'm making the case that's what K and P are, but that if she couldn't be what her child needed, it would be because this war had made her those things, and how do you tell your kid oh by the way...
3. So Effie Trinket could survive, but not Finnick or Madge or the avoxes or the dist 8 refugees? I don't know what to do with that.
4. I was very sure from basically the moment Katniss said she should get to kill Snow that Coin was as badly corrupt as anyone in the Capitol. The regimentation of 13 freaked me out in a Brave New World kind of way, and I was in no way surprised the Katniss killed Coin; I expected that from early, though I thought she'd get TO Snow and then basically welcome Coin with an arrow to the eye. But also yeah, I knew when she voted what was about to happen, and I knew without a doubt when Haymitch said he voted with her that he knew it, too.
5. Boggs. Woe. And yeah, Madge. And Cinna.
6. I think Peeta's damage is the story she wanted to tell here, by the way, as far as point 1 above. I think she chickened out by letting him heal from the true loves, too.
7. I think the POV was a great selling point for Hunger Games and Catching Fire, but deliberate or not, I think it fell apart badly in Mockingjay. The story of someone whose experience and ideals and expectations all keep getting shattered over and over can be a fascinating one, but trying to see everything through the shards isn't just difficult and unsettling (which would be fine), but maybe so disruptive to the story that it stops being a story and is rather a list of events.
8. To sum up: Argh.
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1. End of the day I guess maybe Collins wasn't good enough to carry this through the way she needed to because yes, she just randomly started writing a different series than the one I started reading. Like you I was so on board with the story of the how war can damage people but it could've been wonderful (and more interesting to read!) if she'd figured out a way to tell that story alongside the one she began.
2. Okay yeah, that's definitely a fuller picture of what was going on in her head. She even describes this a little bit at the end, wrt what she might tell her kids when the time came, what she'd tell them about what she did, how fit of a mother she could even be. And it's something that I think had been weighing on her for at least half of this book.
This... doesn't make me feel better about the fact she gave in and had the kids anyway though, I don't think.
3. I honestly think SC figured Effie would hurt less. Because at some point (oh my GOD the avoxes and the District 8 refugees, that should've gone in my point about Madge), it started to be about causing as much pain for Kat and the reader as possible. No seriously, that's the only sense I can make of it.
5. Cinna: still hard to talk about. Even the sketchbook got me.
6. I think she chickened out by letting him heal from the true loves, too. Good point, especially since the hijacking effectively made Peeta more than just a nice chap who loves Katniss, and falling back on the ~healing power of love~ kind of undermined that. I think it's good they got together but throughout the series there's been too much mixing that up with fixing psychological damage. 'Cos it's also heavily implied that Kat's inability to give into Peeta all along was because she's broken somehow.
7. A mess, yep. You put it into words better than me.
no subject
I also read the books in a couple of days, completely unable to put them down once I'd started. While there were some things about the books I wasn't sold on, the most important part to me was the overall storyline. I love, love, love the idea of the Hunger Games as a way of controlling the populace. I adore the good old dystopic universes :)
So anyway, my point here was just to wave and say that I'm going to add you to my circle, if that's okay. I love reading other people's reviews and opinions of books :)
no subject
Whatever I could say about this book, I couldn't put it down, just like I couldn't put the rest of the series down. So I think Collins did her job in that regard.
And of course it's okay! I added you back.