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Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) |  | Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
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Rating:  492 reviews
Sales Rank: 5
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.4
ISBN: 0439023513
EAN: 9780439023511
ASIN: 0439023513
Publication Date: August 24, 2010 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 492
 Some great writing; but what are we left with? September 8, 2010
Kenneth Simon (Los Angeles, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I cried at the end of Mockingjay. Were my tears the kind the author intended to evoke? I'm not sure.
Mockingjay (and the trilogy as a whole) paints an absolutely devastating portrait of humanity. The book begins on a dismal note and the horrors only get more intense and explicit as it progresses. These horrors aren't just grisly deaths, although there are plenty of those. The horrors are psychological. Katniss -- our heroine? -- is reduced to a confused, victimized shell, and even her supposedly heroic choice toward the end of the book is tainted with questions as to her real motives.
Who is there to root for in the world Collins has created? The bad guys are as bad as ever; the good guys aren't really all that good; and innocent children suffer and die. Katniss herself no longer has the luxury of killing only in the arena, and is reduced to slaughtering whatever stranger gets in her way. (Yet we're supposed to be touched that she can't bring herself to kill a boy she cares for.)
War will do that to people. Terrible things happen; people see atrocities and are never the same again. Most don't emerge heroes; they emerge survivors, or they die. Is that what Collins had in mind for Katniss? Is our protagonist only a miserable pawn, playing a role in events she often isn't even there to witness? (One flaw of the book is that while certain big events unfold, Katniss is out of commission, fragile and brooding, only hearing about what has happened.)
Readers expecting the ingenuity of the death traps in the previous books will be rewarded with similarly terrible concoctions here, except that this time they're booby traps in the Capitol City -- and I had a very hard time believing that these traps had been engineered into the city streets the way they had been in the arenas. I was able to put that disbelief aside, but it still nagged at me afterwards.
What are we left with after reading Mockingjay? War is horrible. Well, yes. Does Collins go on and say that it's only the kindness of people, the goodness of one person here and there, that can pull us through and give us hope? No, she never gives us that satisfaction nor much of any redemption in any form. She leaves us at "war is horrible, and it's going to happen again and again, and we'll always be damaged goods." The best she gives us, through the mouth of one oddly chosen character, is that maybe this time will be different and humanity will learn to be at peace, or maybe not.
At the end of Mockingjay, I cried, but not because I was touched by the characters or even the story. I cried for my baby son that he's been born into a world in which humanity could be even remotely like what Collins has shown us. It may be true, but what is the point of leaving your reader with nothing but empty hopelessness?
 If you loved the 1st two books, DON'T READ this one September 8, 2010
ACG
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Horrible disappointment. I LOVED the first two books. Read them both twice. Recommended the series to everyone I spoke with. I was afraid to start Mockingjay b/c I was afraid I wouldn't want it end. I wish I had never read it. It was dark and depressing and nothing else. Terrible conclusion to what started out as a great series.
Missed opportunities September 8, 2010
Patrick Fitzsimons (redondo beach, ca. USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I loved the first two books, because the were just pure and simply good reads. In the Mockingjay I just feel as if there were way to many missed opportunities, by the author, to bring the readers emotions into play. After spending two days reading the book, and three days reading the reviews, (some of the chapters in the book are shorter than many of the reviews. To funny) I simply want to say that with all the death thar took place in this last book, there were just to many missed opportunities at setting the reader up emotionally. This was not a bad book, but I probably would not have chosen to finish it, had I not read the first two.
 When clear lines get blurred September 8, 2010
Galvanized Yankee (Boston, MA)
Not the best of the series, and very depressing.
This book takes a turn that is unexpected, where the lines between right and wrong/good and evil blur. None of the characters have clear and clean motivations, aside from Prim. Suddenly the forces of light and liberation are not always good, but self interested. Katniss is on the verge of madness, and never really leaves it. Even Katniss' since of right and wrong leaves her, she is driven by revenge and bitterness of betrayal.
In the end, nobody is happy or saved, they survive. People don't like the ending, but for what Katniss had endured, it was the best she could do. I found the ending satisfying if not uplifting. There was no way, it could ever end in sweetness and light.
 Mockingjay September 8, 2010
princess bookie (IL, USA)
My Thoughts: Well, I've read so many reviews with spoilers after I read the book. I purposely avoided all the new reviews popping up all over the place because I didn't want to be spoiled. So basically this review is going to be short and I am not going to give away major keypoints of the story. It may contain some mini spoilers though. We are back in the world of Katniss and her family/friends/neighbors/so-called friends. She is now living in District 13 with her mom/sister/Gale. Peeta has been captured by the capital. Her spirits have been weakened because Peeta is not around and she feels like its partly her fault. The people of 13 want her to be the mockingjay, the face of the rebellion. The capital is using every tactic to break Katniss down, they are torturing Peeta and showing him on tv broadcasts, they basically destroyed her home in 13. Peeta is not the same either since he's been tortured. It did irk me a little bit that Katniss basically keeps going between both Gale and Peeta. Make up your mind! She also wasn't very nice to Peeta throughout the book even though in The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, it was her sole mission to make sure Peeta stayed a live, where was that Katniss? Well, I've heard a lot say they hated the ending. I liked the ending. Yes its not picture perfect and it's not the happiest ending I've ever read but I think it tied the series up nicely. I think either way someone is not going to be happy because she can't end up with both guys (wouldn't that be nice though, LOL)? People die, people mature, people love, people grow up, people betray, I cried, I smiled, and I enjoyed this book very much. The characters I thought would die didn't, the characters I thought would live died. It was very heartbreaking and a roller-coaster of emotions.
Overall: I enjoyed Mockingjay. I didn't quite love it as much as The Hunger Games but I did enjoy it just as much but in a different way. I think you just have to appreciate Mockingjay in its own different way than the first two books.
Cover: Mockingjay is my favorite cover so far! I love the bird and I love the blueness of it! It's the prettiest to me!
Taken from Princess Bookie
Hardcover Edition
Showing reviews 1-5 of 492
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