Mockingjay (2010)

*Premise spoilers, including spoilers for the end of Catching Fire*

Going into my reread, I was most curious to see how my opinion of this book might change. I had a pretty strong reaction to it the first time around, and I was wondering how it would strike me now.

Mockingjay finds Katniss a wreck after the events of Catching Fire; her district is in smoldering ruins, Peeta is being held prisoner in the Capitol, and in her underground sanctuary with the rebels of District 13, she’s expected to step up and be the face of a revolution. However, much like the Games relied so heavily on media and image, Katniss is called on to be more of an emblem than a leader. It’s Katniss, so you know she’s not just going to sit back and do what she’s told, but the vision District 13 has is of a gorgeous freedom fighter giving stirring speeches and wielding prop weapons in front of a camera.

The first time I read Mockingjay, I came away disappointed in it as a conclusion to the trilogy. On the whole, I thought it felt too unrelenting in its torment of Katniss, and in particular, the bleak ending left me feeling depleted. And I’m not a big epilogue fan in general, so that didn’t really make things better for me. My thoughts mellowed somewhat with the movies, but Mockingjay was still my least favorite of the trilogy.

Fast forward, though, to Sunrise on the Reaping. Bleak, brutal Sunrise on the Reaping, my beloved, tormenting our poor hero left and right until it reached the point where I’d never been so grateful for an epilogue in my life. The circumstances aren’t exactly the same, since being a prequel gives Sunrise on the Reaping freer license to be grim—there’s a reason Return of the Jedi doesn’t end the same way as Revenge of the Sith. Still, is it fair to look at Mockingjay and knock it for something that I love about Sunrise on the Reaping?

Long story short, I still don’t know that I find Mockingjay entirely satisfying, but my opinion on it has improved quite a bit. I’m better able to see the purpose for the ending, beyond just torturing Katniss, and I understand why Suzanne Collins went that route. Perhaps even more importantly, I’m better able to look at the book as a whole instead of just focusing on the ending. And there’s so much good stuff in Mockingjay.

I love that, having gotten out from under the Capitol and been rescued by the rebels, Katniss still finds herself caught in the expectations of people who are interested in her primarily as a symbol. This is a revolution that very much will be televised, and it’s fascinating to see Katniss navigate that, figuring out how to provide the symbol of rebellion that the districts need while also refusing to be a mere mouthpiece when others are risking their lives. And I appreciate Katniss’s distrust of District 13’s President Coin, the acknowledgement that armed conflict is complicated and messy and that, even if your enemy does unequivocally horrific things, that doesn’t automatically mean all your allies are pure of heart.

I really adore seeing the deepening of Katniss’s friendship with Finnick in this book. On the face of it, they might seem like pretty unlikely friends, but I love how they lean on each other after their shared traumatic experiences, knowing that they’re both in the same terrible boat. After Sunrise on the Reaping, it’s wonderful to see how Haymitch looks out for Katniss, Peeta, and to a lesser extent other young victors like Finnick. He doesn’t lose his cantankerousness and irascibility, but it’s more evident than ever how much he cares about them and wishes he could protect them from the sort of torture he suffered at the hands of the Capitol. And I greatly enjoy the documentary crew that’s tapped to film Katniss’s revolutionary “propos.” I always appreciate seeing folks from the Capitol joining the rebellion, and like Cinna before them, I love the demonstration that there are more ways to contribute to justice than taking up arms. The documentary crew fights with their filmmaking talents, just like Cinna fights with his designs.

Warnings

Violence (including violence against children and references to torture,) strong thematic elements (including suicide,) disturbing images, and drinking/drug use.

Catching Fire (2009)

*Premise spoilers*

Rolling on through to Catching Fire. I’m really loving this reread, all the little details that are jumping out in hindsight. Let’s get into it!

After the events of The Hunger Games, Katniss is back home struggling with how to move forward. Her bold move in the Arena is fanning sparks of rebellion in a number of districts, and on the eve of her shared “Victory Tour” with Peeta—with whom she has to continue the ruse to the Capitol that they’re madly in love—the president personally lets her know that the lives of everyone she loves will be on the line if she can’t do her job as Capitol puppet and pacify the masses.

Look, Catching Fire is just that girl. She really is. For my money, this is the most uneven book in the series. The great parts are positively scintillating, the type of story and characters that itch my brain so good! If it was like that all the way through, it’d be duking it out hard with Sunrise on the Reaping as my favorite. But there’s a stretch in the middle, between the Victory Tour and the announcement of the Quarter Quell for the 75^th Hunger Games, where it feels like the book is spinning its wheels. I understand Katniss’s conflict as she feels stuck between her fear of the Capitol and her guilt at not using her position/influence to make more of a difference, but the narrative result is kind of clunky. We spend several chapters watching Katniss change her mind back and forth, and it’s all tied up in a bunch of love triangle stuff, which is a weak point of the trilogy anyway. It works a little better for me on reread, but the middle section’s issues still stand out to me.

My first time reading it, I remember that it took me a long time to figure out what the book was actually about. Early on, I figured it’d be about the Victory Tour, but that wraps up so quickly and we hit the wheel-spinning stretch. It’s not until the Quarter Quell announcement that it really zeroes in on its direction, at least for me. But once it does, everything slots into place and the book is basically firing on all cylinders from there. It’s fascinating to see how this Games differs from the one in the first book, from the pre-Games events to the tributes to the Arena itself.

I’d already liked so many of the characters in the first book, and this one introduces a whole host of interesting new ones. It’s also cool to spend significant time getting to know characters from other districts. In The Hunger Games, we mainly know the District 12 crew, some of the Capitol folks, and Rue, getting much smaller glimpses of everyone else. But here, there’s a lot of neat stuff for Finnick and Mags, for Beetee and Wiress, and for Johanna. I love all these characters, and that love has only grown over time. They’re not just functions of Katniss’s journey either—we learn details of some of their backstories, and we’re able to make our own emotional connections with them.

Catching Fire is probably the book I was most excited to revisit this time around, for obvious reasons. It’s so neat to return to our introductions to characters who play such major roles in Sunrise on the Reaping, to look at them through the lens of what I’ve learned about their pasts. For that reason—and the Quarter Quell in general—I’m guessing this one will wind up being my favorite of the reread.

Warnings

Violence (including against teens,) strong thematic elements, disturbing images, sexualization of teenagers, and drinking/drug references.

The Hunger Games (2008)

Despite all the amazing new stuff that’s been coming out the last few months, Sunrise on the Reaping hasn’t loosened its hold on my brain. In my Hunger Games reread, I’m currently in the last third of Catching Fire, and all the old feels are still going strong. I was revisiting some of my old posts about the franchise and realized that, while I reviewed the Mockingjay films as they were coming out and later circled back to write about the first two movies during a rewatch, I actually never wrote about the original book trilogy. So, since I’ve been tearing through them again, I thought I’d better remedy that.

Every year, the authoritarian government of Panem instigates the Hunger Games: a brutal, televised battle royale in which two children from each of the country’s twelve districts are chosen at random, dropped into a specially-designed arena, and forced to fight to the death, both for the entertainment of those in the Capitol and as a reminder to the districts of the government’s absolute control. When 16-year-old Katniss hears her younger sister’s name drawn as the female tribute from District 12, she volunteers to go in her place. Years of poverty and hunger have taught her survival skills, but she’ll need more than that to make it through the world’s harshest, cruelest reality show.

Pound for pound, I still think this is the best book of the trilogy. By the time I’m done, I’m guessing Sunrise on the Reaping will remain my pick for best of the franchise, and I’ll have all kinds of things to say about Catching Fire soon, but The Hunger Games is great. It lays out the intriguing society of Panem, with the widespread deprivation in the Districts, the glitzy excess in the Capitol, and of course, the brutal spectacle of the Games. I love that it’s not just about violence and oppression but also media and imagery. It’s so interesting to me that Katniss doesn’t just have to worry about surviving the dangers of the arena. She also constantly needs to be aware of the fact that she’s on camera and how her actions will play to the audience. She has plenty of wilderness skills and can shoot a bow with deadly accuracy, but it’s really hard for her to present herself as a packageable “type” for viewers and let them see her private moments. Meanwhile, her tribute partner Peeta doesn’t have her skills for keeping himself alive, but he’s a natural when it comes to playing the media side of the Games, giving the Capitol audience a story they can really root for.

This book introduces us to so many terrific characters. I was all about Katniss, Cinna, and Rue from day one, but others have grown on me a lot over the course of the franchise and subsequent rewatches/rereads. Obviously, I’ve been living for all the Haymitch tidbits on this reread—when I get more used to the movie version of the character, I forget how gross and mean he can be at times in this book, but that just makes it better when he does step up as Katniss and Peeta’s mentor. I’ll forever love the unspoken way he and Katniss communicate via the sponsored gifts he arranges to send her in the arena, and I really wish the movies could’ve found a better way to show that. I’m also appreciating Peeta a lot more, who’s allowed to be soft and romantic while also being smart and tough, and Effie is an icon. Also not to be counted out? Caesar Flickerman. I really like the detail that, while the gaudy host of the Games is primarily focused on putting on a good show, he also uses his own skills to make each tribute as memorable as possible, helping them find an “in” to connect with the audience.

This was also my introduction to Suzanne Collins, the queen of cliffhangers. My first time reading the trilogy, I learned that I had to stop reading just before the end of a chapter—if I got to the end, chances are I wouldn’t be able to stop reading because I’d be screaming, “Whaaaat?!?” Hit after hit. This is a hard-hitting, emotional book with lots of mature themes for teens, but it’s also just a cracker of an exciting, suspenseful story.

I can’t remember the last time I read the trilogy, but it was definitely pre-The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It’s wild how much stuff leapt out at me on this read, either references to things that become important later in the trilogy—Johanna Mason reference!—or get flushed out in the prequels—she goes to the lake to harvest Katniss! I could easily fill a whole post with that stuff, so I probably will. I’ve been jotting things down as I go, and once I’m finished rereading all the books, I’ll write up one, or several, posts of the “Suzanne Collins, the writer you are” variety.

Warnings

Violence (especially against children and teens,) strong thematic elements, sexualization of teenagers, disturbing images, and drinking.