Mockingjay!
Once upon a time, there was a book called The Hunger Games. Somewhat randomly, Marbles brought an ARC home with her from BEA, said everyone was talking about it, read it, and said, “OMG, you have to read this, you are going to love it.”
And I said, “Marbles, ILU, but seriously, we are really not book friends, and btw, books about children killing each other on TV is not indicative of my love for a book, what kind of a freak do you think I am?”
So I put it off for a bit, because it sounded dreadful and Marbles and I are seriously not book friends, but Marbles badgers when she wants me to read a book, so eventually, I picked it up before bed on a weeknight...and fucking well stayed up until 3:00 in the morning finishing it. Damn that Marbles.
I love that book. I do. It’s not the best written book ever (though Cheryl Klein does a great talk about how deft the pacing is), though I’m really not someone who requires awesome writing to fall in love with a book. I’m actually perfectly happy to divide my books into books I love and books I admire, and only sometimes are they the same books.
Sometimes the plotting drives me insane. I would happily have taken away the last 50 pages of The Hunger Games, where Collins took away the book I thought she wrote and gave me another book entirely. To be honest, I still don’t like the series nearly so much as all-but-the-last-50-pages of The Hunger Games as a standalone. Which is not to say that I don't love the series, only that I love The Hunger Games a whole fucking lot.
Sometimes Katniss drives me insane, though I think she rings true. There are badass girls I like more, but never have I read a book where an author has put her heroine through so much pain, so I also tend to forgive Katniss all of her stupid and unthinking and drama.
But the book? It’s brutal. It’s relentless and ruthless and unfair and occasionally gorgeous. Some of it is a wonder. It’s like Collins takes you by the back of the neck and makes you look, hard, at this horrifying world of death and mutations and casual violence that she’s made all too real and then every once in a while she gives you a tiny spark of joy or hope or beauty or respect. (And to be honest, we all know that I struggle with dystopian political worlds. I didn’t like either The Handmaid’s Tale or Battle Royale because the politics were incomprehensible, and I only loved Unwind once I made a conscious decision to buy in, which was just about the time that we got to the most harrowing scene I’ve ever read, but that’s a different post entirely.)
And somehow, she weaves all this violence and all this gore and all this horror while keeping you glued to the page (instead of making you want to hurl; I’m looking at you, Bret Easton Ellis).
I’ve certainly read better written books, where I’ve stopped to wonder at the language. I’ve certainly read books I loved more, usually because I adore the main character or the message. But I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book that I found more compelling. And I don’t know that I’ve read a book that I more strongly recommend to everyone.
And my love for that book carried me through Catching Fire, which I found suffered moderately from middle-book syndrome (think of The Two Towers, where we spent a shitload of time wandering around, not doing much, to get us set up for The Return of the King). I kind of found the Quarter Quell, while compelling on its own, to feel like a re-hash of The Hunger Games with the sole purpose of providing a flashpoint and set-up for Mockingjay. (And I really should have re-read the last third of that book, because I found it a bit hard to follow at the time, and I sure as shit didn’t remember who all of those people were when they showed up again.)
Oh, Suzanne Collins. You and your horrible world and your awful people and your indecisive heroine and your constant poking at how terrible a person or a society can be before it loses all of its humanity. You wrote a story that is clearly also a political statement, but a story first and foremost, and while there are parts of this book where I was like, “WHAT ARE WE DOING, SUZANNE?” there are three things that make me love you and the final book in your terrible, awful, horrible world.
First, this is still Katniss’s story. Even though you wrote a political trilogy that I wasn’t expecting and haven't always wanted, it’s still all about Katniss. It’s Katniss’s story and we see her constant struggles and her pain and her courage and her hopelessness and how few choices she really has and we see her try to make things right and instead create absolute chaos.
Second, everything is still so morally awful. The Capitol sucks. But the rebels are just as unlikeable and, in the end, just as horrible. It’s war, and it’s never sugar-coated and we see civilians die and we see people we love die and we see absolutely horrible actions taken by both sides in the name of the greater good, whatever that means. It’s a really good way to both make a political statement and get people to really consider what war is.
Third, it’s still about the Games. Since The Hunger Games and Catching Fire were so dominated by the Hunger Games, Mockingjay felt sort of adrift...right up until Boggs threw up the Holo in District 13 and Finnick and Katniss both recognized the hazards of the Games and the central structure of the entire series dropped in. Putting the Games in the Capitol and then putting Katniss in the Games gave the series a continuity, even in the degeneration of the country in Mockingjay that it desperately needed.
Mockingjay didn’t surprise me (regrettably, since we all know how much I like books that surprise me). Collins wrung me out so much in The Hunger Games and the revelation of the Quarter Quell in Catching Fire just about killed me, but when we’re back in the land of political uprisings and assassinations and war strategy and supply lines, I’m on pretty solid footing. What Mockingjay did do for me, though, was give me a culmination that I could believe and that I found satisfying. There’s no pat, happy ending. Katniss hurts, the country hurts, rocks fall and lots and lots of people die. But I believed it, and if Collins wrote a million more books in this series, I would read them all.
And, really, the fact that Collins was able to write a series that I love that didn’t wreck my absolute love for The Hunger Games as Katniss’s story instead of a political set-up, is a bloody miracle. Hooray! *\o/*
And I said, “Marbles, ILU, but seriously, we are really not book friends, and btw, books about children killing each other on TV is not indicative of my love for a book, what kind of a freak do you think I am?”
So I put it off for a bit, because it sounded dreadful and Marbles and I are seriously not book friends, but Marbles badgers when she wants me to read a book, so eventually, I picked it up before bed on a weeknight...and fucking well stayed up until 3:00 in the morning finishing it. Damn that Marbles.
I love that book. I do. It’s not the best written book ever (though Cheryl Klein does a great talk about how deft the pacing is), though I’m really not someone who requires awesome writing to fall in love with a book. I’m actually perfectly happy to divide my books into books I love and books I admire, and only sometimes are they the same books.
Sometimes the plotting drives me insane. I would happily have taken away the last 50 pages of The Hunger Games, where Collins took away the book I thought she wrote and gave me another book entirely. To be honest, I still don’t like the series nearly so much as all-but-the-last-50-pages of The Hunger Games as a standalone. Which is not to say that I don't love the series, only that I love The Hunger Games a whole fucking lot.
Sometimes Katniss drives me insane, though I think she rings true. There are badass girls I like more, but never have I read a book where an author has put her heroine through so much pain, so I also tend to forgive Katniss all of her stupid and unthinking and drama.
But the book? It’s brutal. It’s relentless and ruthless and unfair and occasionally gorgeous. Some of it is a wonder. It’s like Collins takes you by the back of the neck and makes you look, hard, at this horrifying world of death and mutations and casual violence that she’s made all too real and then every once in a while she gives you a tiny spark of joy or hope or beauty or respect. (And to be honest, we all know that I struggle with dystopian political worlds. I didn’t like either The Handmaid’s Tale or Battle Royale because the politics were incomprehensible, and I only loved Unwind once I made a conscious decision to buy in, which was just about the time that we got to the most harrowing scene I’ve ever read, but that’s a different post entirely.)
And somehow, she weaves all this violence and all this gore and all this horror while keeping you glued to the page (instead of making you want to hurl; I’m looking at you, Bret Easton Ellis).
I’ve certainly read better written books, where I’ve stopped to wonder at the language. I’ve certainly read books I loved more, usually because I adore the main character or the message. But I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book that I found more compelling. And I don’t know that I’ve read a book that I more strongly recommend to everyone.
And my love for that book carried me through Catching Fire, which I found suffered moderately from middle-book syndrome (think of The Two Towers, where we spent a shitload of time wandering around, not doing much, to get us set up for The Return of the King). I kind of found the Quarter Quell, while compelling on its own, to feel like a re-hash of The Hunger Games with the sole purpose of providing a flashpoint and set-up for Mockingjay. (And I really should have re-read the last third of that book, because I found it a bit hard to follow at the time, and I sure as shit didn’t remember who all of those people were when they showed up again.)
Oh, Suzanne Collins. You and your horrible world and your awful people and your indecisive heroine and your constant poking at how terrible a person or a society can be before it loses all of its humanity. You wrote a story that is clearly also a political statement, but a story first and foremost, and while there are parts of this book where I was like, “WHAT ARE WE DOING, SUZANNE?” there are three things that make me love you and the final book in your terrible, awful, horrible world.
First, this is still Katniss’s story. Even though you wrote a political trilogy that I wasn’t expecting and haven't always wanted, it’s still all about Katniss. It’s Katniss’s story and we see her constant struggles and her pain and her courage and her hopelessness and how few choices she really has and we see her try to make things right and instead create absolute chaos.
Second, everything is still so morally awful. The Capitol sucks. But the rebels are just as unlikeable and, in the end, just as horrible. It’s war, and it’s never sugar-coated and we see civilians die and we see people we love die and we see absolutely horrible actions taken by both sides in the name of the greater good, whatever that means. It’s a really good way to both make a political statement and get people to really consider what war is.
Third, it’s still about the Games. Since The Hunger Games and Catching Fire were so dominated by the Hunger Games, Mockingjay felt sort of adrift...right up until Boggs threw up the Holo in District 13 and Finnick and Katniss both recognized the hazards of the Games and the central structure of the entire series dropped in. Putting the Games in the Capitol and then putting Katniss in the Games gave the series a continuity, even in the degeneration of the country in Mockingjay that it desperately needed.
Mockingjay didn’t surprise me (regrettably, since we all know how much I like books that surprise me). Collins wrung me out so much in The Hunger Games and the revelation of the Quarter Quell in Catching Fire just about killed me, but when we’re back in the land of political uprisings and assassinations and war strategy and supply lines, I’m on pretty solid footing. What Mockingjay did do for me, though, was give me a culmination that I could believe and that I found satisfying. There’s no pat, happy ending. Katniss hurts, the country hurts, rocks fall and lots and lots of people die. But I believed it, and if Collins wrote a million more books in this series, I would read them all.
And, really, the fact that Collins was able to write a series that I love that didn’t wreck my absolute love for The Hunger Games as Katniss’s story instead of a political set-up, is a bloody miracle. Hooray! *\o/*