The Hunger Games by
Suzanne Collins… everyone was talking about it, my girlfriend devoured the
trilogy, and – despite my biggest deterrent: hype – I was intrigued enough to
dive into the series.
I liked reading
the first installment (The Hunger Games)
because it was easy and quick to read, the chapters were short (which can be a
really nice thing), and because it was a literary idea like I’d never read
before. It was imaginative, original,
creative, and fascinating; these are great elements in a novel.
I started reading Catching
Fire (the second book of the three) because I had to know what happened
next. I read this novel even more
quickly than the first. I loved this one
in particular because it went in a direction that I had never predicted. It was surprising and even more engaging than
its predecessor. I was hooked!
Then I moved on to Mockingjay
and I faltered. I pushed through the
first bit and then couldn’t get hooked again.
It lay gathering dust on my kitchen table for weeks… I think it took me
nearly 2.5 months, if not more, to get through it in the end. It just didn’t deliver like the others
did. Sure, it was a new story, but it
wasn’t that same action-packed, page-turning excitement that had me racing
through the first two.
Then – worst of all – the ending fell flat. I liked what I gathered some of the
overarching themes were, bleak as some of them may be, but it was just so…
unsatisfying. It wrapped up too quickly
without enough loose end-tying. It just
kind of went splat – there you go, it’s over.
The definition of anticlimactic.
Was it worth the read?
Absolutely. But as my friend
Waleed said, “It’s not a good sign when you’re really happy you’re done.”
[This whole unsatisfying experience was heightened by
the sigh of relief and overwhelming sense of sustenance I felt when I dove into
my current read: In One Person by
John Irving.]
Posts to come... a full update on Reading Challenge #4 + anniversary dinner at Yours Truly & a beer beforehand
1 comment:
I have very similar feelings on Mockingjay. It just didn't engage me and thought it was an interesting choice to go with more realism than heroics for Katniss. It is realistic to expect that anyone would have some mental health issues after experiencing something like The Hunger Games once, let alone twice, but that doesn't make for a good read necessarily. I think thats where The Hunger Games trilogy really differed from my favourite series of all time: Harry Potter. Harry doesn't act in realistic or even logical ways, he is so dedicated to his cause and willing to die or put himself in danger at any moment. JK Rowling didn't write for realism, she wrote for fantasy and excitement, and I think thats where Suzanne Collins went wrong with Mockingjay. Everyone wanted their heroine back but she was too broken, which just made it boring. Theres my two cents, anyway.
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