Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay

Mockingjay is the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy. (I'm going to skip Catching Fire and possibly review that later.) At this point in the series I was as tired as the characters themselves. Tired, but still struggling through this awful rebellion against the Capitol. For those of you who have read the book I'm sorry to say that though the books were so emotional, especially Rue's death in the first book, I have always remained a Capitol fan. And Mockingjay simply turned me against the rebellion entirely.

Maybe it was the confusion of the ending that got me. It took several discussions with friends online and at school to decipher exactly what was trying to be portrayed in the final chapters. Another lot of confusion came from who was killing who and why. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through when by that point the rebellion had pretty much happened. The death of Prim was expected by me, though apparently not by others, as she was just too clean a character to continue living in the dark book. It was Odair's death that hit me hardest.

Finnick Odair was the comic relief character seen in many thriller books (also a character I've seen a lot in anime) that despite their humour have a dark and tortured past that still affects them in the future. His character, he'd been through so much, that if I had been writing I would simply not have had the heart to have him die just before what he was fighting for was achieved. It was simply not in his character to die. Odair was a survivor. He survived the Hunger Games, twice, and even managed to train up and go back out to fight, after marrying the girl he loved, a girl he was kept from in the Capitol to keep up his sexual bad boy image. Odair really shouldn't have died, because when he did I lost faith in Collins' work so much that I barely even blinked when Prim died. 

Suzanne Collins seems to have really let her imagination run wild, without trying to reign herself in. It's obvious that the confusing ending that was perfectly clear in her head did not translate well onto the page. I marvel at the fact that her editors didn't feel the need to put a stop to this confusion. However, I expect they had no need to, as I'm still an avid Hunger Games fan, and have seen the film, and intend to see the other. Despite this headache inducing ending, the Hunger Games Trilogy is still a winner.

Prejudice, Racism, and Rue.

Here you will find a very interesting article on the racism of the character Rue from the Hunger Games trilogy. Something I was completely oblivious to until today, it also devastated me to read that one viewer claims that they weren't as upset when Rue died in the film because she was dark skinned, despite her being dark skinned in the book and me weeping like a child during both the book and film scenes of her death, with the same applicable to the other tribute from her district named Thresh.

Rue - The Hunger Games Film

However it did make me realise that I, despite being of Caribbean decent, am quick to assume that most characters are Caucasian unless stated otherwise. And that since I was a little girl my stories have been filled with Caucasian girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. And my one African character was a boy who worked for the Witch Queen Hecate as an essential slave! 

Thresh - The Hunger Games Film

I've decided to make an effort to read more literature featuring People of Colour and writing about it too, as I believe that they seem to be over looked, whilst black people in film are a much more sensitive issue as the film industry has a larger consuming audience, not much seems to be said about black people in literature, Asian people in literature, Chinese people in literature, or any ethnic minority. 

Quite frankly I find it a little disturbing and I'm disappointed, mostly in myself.

The Curious Incident - Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

The first time I read this book was in class in year nine and I enjoyed it immensely. It's about a young boy with behavioural problems (Most publishers say it's a type of Autism but I recently read an article about how Haddon became upset that he didn't specify autism so...) who decides to investigate the murder of the neighbours dog, only to uncover a lot of secrets kept by the supposedly trustworthy adults around him. 

Though the main character isn't exactly an expert on natural human emotion, Haddon uses this ignorance of his character to play around with the readers own emotions quite a lot. The reader ends up seeing more than the character Christopher due to their insight of emotion that Christopher lacks. Which left me crying at parts where Christopher would simply begin doing a maths puzzle in his head to distract himself from the seemingly unimportant things happening around him.

My only qualm with the book is the predictable story line. Haddon uses his writing style well to show Christopher's personality, but this seems to be the only unique thing about the book. The almost soap opera like secrecy and plot twists and turns are nothing that haven't really been done before. Leaving me believing that Haddon relied solely on his writing style, which was the product of a unique character. The plot line itself doesn't do much for me, though the characters and the emotion make up for it in that I've read it multiple times.

In all honestly I cried a lot at this book. And I would recommend reading it if you don't get too emotionally attached to books and characters, as whilst reading it I found that I wasn't the happiest of people. 

On an entirely different note my friend has Eragon. My brother has Eldest. I'm about to start Inheritance. And there's a sad empty space around my copy of Brisingr. Not to mention I spent forever looking up plot summary's for the first three books because it's been so so so long since I've read any of them, only to open the book and find a small prologue of the events from the previous books! It might be a long while since I post again, as Inheritance is quite long and I do have exams next month.

Elias xx