I have been so busy lately and so tired that getting through all the blogs sometimes makes me wonder if I have lost my mind somewhere along the way.
I finished Mockingjay yesterday. It was a mixed bag. I once told a Mel Gibson fan and friend of mine- that the reason that I could not enjoy THE PATRIOT was that it was too much tragedy, too much killing, too much pain. Now I suspect that Suzanne Collins has bypassed old Mel by miles and miles.
Mockingjay and the Hunger Games books have a similar problems.
I will list them in no certain order.
1. Katniss is really a confused teenager who is in no way an adult until the epilogue. What she faces as a character is unbelievably harsh and yet there are times when I want to take her out to her woods and yell at her to stop acting like a befuddle 16 year old and pick someone to love. Then I realize she is a befuddle 16 year old who would act this way. How in the heck is she supposed to understand love when everyone seems to be out to exploit her and or kill her? Still I wish that Collins would have given Katniss a break, like not killing Prim. Prim might have had to die, but I have a hard time with it. Katniss had pleanty of Motivation without it.
2. Why couldn't Madge have survived? Back to the too much aspect and the general round robin beatings on Katniss' ego. What's worse was that Madge was in fact a really good character and it was a real waste to write her off as just another expendable. Her death was in fact meaningless in the extreme especially since she ended up having no key roll in the plot at all. Her surviving the books would have been at least some reprieve for Katniss- some connection that would have repaired some of the lingering damage.
3. The pods drove me crazy about midway through the capital. The book descended into a poorly thought out video game. Ironically I suspect if they end up making a movie of Mockingjay that the video game adaption will have even more pods in it. What pods really say to me, is that the author was not satisfied that her world was horrifying enough. Overkill in so many words and also robbed the meanings of the deaths of Katniss's companions. There are plenty of other options instead of resorting to this kind of "cheating." It all goes hand in hand with the "STEVEN SEAGAL" approach to the books where the point of the book is to rack up a visceral body count.
4. Finnick did not have to die- frankly I am surprised that he was there in the first place. He gets married and know 5 minutes of bliss then happily goes to his death instead of doing the most logical reasonable thing that he has been described as doing up until that point. HIS DEATH IS ALMOST THE MOST POINTLESS in all the books.
5. nuclear weapons. need I say more. (rhetorical question) Okay, let me clarify. Don't use stuff that you don't explain or want to actually deal with. It's like we got to have a reason that the Capitol and 13 don't wipe each other out- but the fact of wanting to regain the district intact is not enough. And then there is the chemical bombs- only mentioned in passing and never realized.
6. I really just felt that plot devices and gadgetry was used to invoke the tragedy and thus the point of the series instead of relying on drama and angst and conflict between the main characters There was plenty of that without all the sidetracks the books ended up taking.
Tomorrow, I will try to blog about what I liked about the books and why I might even read them again one day.
For the record. The Hunger Games was my favorite book out of the three.
I finished Mockingjay yesterday. It was a mixed bag. I once told a Mel Gibson fan and friend of mine- that the reason that I could not enjoy THE PATRIOT was that it was too much tragedy, too much killing, too much pain. Now I suspect that Suzanne Collins has bypassed old Mel by miles and miles.
Mockingjay and the Hunger Games books have a similar problems.
I will list them in no certain order.
1. Katniss is really a confused teenager who is in no way an adult until the epilogue. What she faces as a character is unbelievably harsh and yet there are times when I want to take her out to her woods and yell at her to stop acting like a befuddle 16 year old and pick someone to love. Then I realize she is a befuddle 16 year old who would act this way. How in the heck is she supposed to understand love when everyone seems to be out to exploit her and or kill her? Still I wish that Collins would have given Katniss a break, like not killing Prim. Prim might have had to die, but I have a hard time with it. Katniss had pleanty of Motivation without it.
2. Why couldn't Madge have survived? Back to the too much aspect and the general round robin beatings on Katniss' ego. What's worse was that Madge was in fact a really good character and it was a real waste to write her off as just another expendable. Her death was in fact meaningless in the extreme especially since she ended up having no key roll in the plot at all. Her surviving the books would have been at least some reprieve for Katniss- some connection that would have repaired some of the lingering damage.
3. The pods drove me crazy about midway through the capital. The book descended into a poorly thought out video game. Ironically I suspect if they end up making a movie of Mockingjay that the video game adaption will have even more pods in it. What pods really say to me, is that the author was not satisfied that her world was horrifying enough. Overkill in so many words and also robbed the meanings of the deaths of Katniss's companions. There are plenty of other options instead of resorting to this kind of "cheating." It all goes hand in hand with the "STEVEN SEAGAL" approach to the books where the point of the book is to rack up a visceral body count.
4. Finnick did not have to die- frankly I am surprised that he was there in the first place. He gets married and know 5 minutes of bliss then happily goes to his death instead of doing the most logical reasonable thing that he has been described as doing up until that point. HIS DEATH IS ALMOST THE MOST POINTLESS in all the books.
5. nuclear weapons. need I say more. (rhetorical question) Okay, let me clarify. Don't use stuff that you don't explain or want to actually deal with. It's like we got to have a reason that the Capitol and 13 don't wipe each other out- but the fact of wanting to regain the district intact is not enough. And then there is the chemical bombs- only mentioned in passing and never realized.
6. I really just felt that plot devices and gadgetry was used to invoke the tragedy and thus the point of the series instead of relying on drama and angst and conflict between the main characters There was plenty of that without all the sidetracks the books ended up taking.
Tomorrow, I will try to blog about what I liked about the books and why I might even read them again one day.
For the record. The Hunger Games was my favorite book out of the three.
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