Warning: EPIC-level spoilers definitely follow. Hint: The thread has the words 'ENDING OF' in thread title.
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The ending of 'Mockingjay' sucked, and blew, at the same time.
No, I don't think it sucked because she didn't end up with Gale, or because she didn't kill Snow, or any other plot reason. Nor because I dislike abstract psychological musings, even as the totally inappropriate end of a book series.
It was because it was as if, at the climactic battle of an epic action book, another, different author took over and wrote another, different type of book about another, different character to Katniss that happened to have the same name.
So many things wrong. The change of pace from brutal action to weird psycho-trauma introspection was horribly jarring - I have no problem with the idea, but a few hundred more pages of book were needed to do it in a smooth way.
And Katniss personally endorses another Hunger Games? Really? I'm sorry, I know her personality after three books and years in her company. And while she wildly differs to Peeta on many things, there's no way she would support the idea of a new Hunger Games. There's no way she would deliberately and arbitrarily agree to inflict that torture on other hapless people, the Capitol people who she alone among the rebels defended and saw as people. She's selfish and vengeful, but she's not cruel. She'd love to stab Snow in the throat, but she would't Hijack him. If you want to sell me that the death of her sister so profoundly changed her personality that she became a sociopath like Johanna, fine - but you need to actually sell it. Not give me a few pages of her illogical thoughts, without any further actions, and then have her do something that was pretty clearly anathema to her very nature from the start of the series.
And why did her dearly loved ones suddenly abandon her? They hadn't been tortured. Ok, her mum had pre-established psychological weakness issues, but Gale? Really? I can't buy it if you don't sell it, Ms. Collins. Gale wouldn't abandon his pursuit of her, and leave her to lonely depression in District. 12 for nothing more a than illogical spat (someone used the bombs that Gale helped suggest the idea of to accidentally kill her sister). No, just no. You've already established his relationship with her was very strong. Now you have to UNDO that if you want to make him into a jerk now. So do that, if you want to, you're the author. But don't just tell me this vital narrative event happened in the backstory without showing me a damn thing.
I could go on and on. Nothing in it makes much sense, quite apart from the ridiculous anti-climax. But moreover, nothing is quite so irritating as a writer who makes you feel like you wasted your time.
After racing with Katniss for hundreds of pages, watching most of the best characters be killed off horribly one after the other, I expected...something. Something big, something hinted at like the plot twist with Coin. But main plot just...ends. Our objectives are not achieved, the goals were not replaced with others. Instead of the continuing story of the fate of Panem, we get minutia of Katniss' mental processes. Which the story had never been about till now. Fine, but why did I just sit through the entire book? What was the point of it? She ends up leading a pointless existence and the suggestion is that her whole struggle may well have been pointless. Which while a bitter twist, is OK - except we're not even sure it even happened.
Coin's dead...did the burgeoning new tyranny she was forging die with her? Did Plutarch's brutal fatalism shape an even worse one? We don't know. We're never told what happens. She lives happily ever after, sort of, but suddenly the themes and messages of the Hunger Games series were actually not the point at all? It was all an irrelevant account of one person who in the end didn't do anything important? Maybe that was the point. Maybe it was a meta-existential commentary on the uselessness of life and striving, espousing the postulates of Zeno and Schopenhauer.
If so, it was shit.
I don't feel like I missed the point, I feel like the author did. Or never had one. Or lacked the skill to execute what she was intending.
In fact, I think it's pretty clear what happened, and it's nigh unforgivable. The Coin-as-villain twist, the suggestion that a new leader would be needed in the post-Snow era, everyone always talking up the amazing power that the Mockingjay wielded across the nation...
Collins was going to write a fourth book. Then she got near the end of MJ, decided she couldn't be arsed, and "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies".
Really, did you need the paycheck to release Mockingjay that badly that you had to do that? If you lost the passion to write, fine, leave us with our happy memories of the great "Catching Fire". Don't release a half-baked book that wastes the reader's time and remove the opportunity for you to actually write that epic conclusion one day. If your publisher wouldn't accept your other writings that you WERE still interested in, find another one that will. You will find a taker somewhere to publish anything, a freaking Christmas poem book if you wanted, after the success of Hunger Games.
For shame, Ms Collins.
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The ending of 'Mockingjay' sucked, and blew, at the same time.
No, I don't think it sucked because she didn't end up with Gale, or because she didn't kill Snow, or any other plot reason. Nor because I dislike abstract psychological musings, even as the totally inappropriate end of a book series.
It was because it was as if, at the climactic battle of an epic action book, another, different author took over and wrote another, different type of book about another, different character to Katniss that happened to have the same name.
So many things wrong. The change of pace from brutal action to weird psycho-trauma introspection was horribly jarring - I have no problem with the idea, but a few hundred more pages of book were needed to do it in a smooth way.
And Katniss personally endorses another Hunger Games? Really? I'm sorry, I know her personality after three books and years in her company. And while she wildly differs to Peeta on many things, there's no way she would support the idea of a new Hunger Games. There's no way she would deliberately and arbitrarily agree to inflict that torture on other hapless people, the Capitol people who she alone among the rebels defended and saw as people. She's selfish and vengeful, but she's not cruel. She'd love to stab Snow in the throat, but she would't Hijack him. If you want to sell me that the death of her sister so profoundly changed her personality that she became a sociopath like Johanna, fine - but you need to actually sell it. Not give me a few pages of her illogical thoughts, without any further actions, and then have her do something that was pretty clearly anathema to her very nature from the start of the series.
And why did her dearly loved ones suddenly abandon her? They hadn't been tortured. Ok, her mum had pre-established psychological weakness issues, but Gale? Really? I can't buy it if you don't sell it, Ms. Collins. Gale wouldn't abandon his pursuit of her, and leave her to lonely depression in District. 12 for nothing more a than illogical spat (someone used the bombs that Gale helped suggest the idea of to accidentally kill her sister). No, just no. You've already established his relationship with her was very strong. Now you have to UNDO that if you want to make him into a jerk now. So do that, if you want to, you're the author. But don't just tell me this vital narrative event happened in the backstory without showing me a damn thing.
I could go on and on. Nothing in it makes much sense, quite apart from the ridiculous anti-climax. But moreover, nothing is quite so irritating as a writer who makes you feel like you wasted your time.
After racing with Katniss for hundreds of pages, watching most of the best characters be killed off horribly one after the other, I expected...something. Something big, something hinted at like the plot twist with Coin. But main plot just...ends. Our objectives are not achieved, the goals were not replaced with others. Instead of the continuing story of the fate of Panem, we get minutia of Katniss' mental processes. Which the story had never been about till now. Fine, but why did I just sit through the entire book? What was the point of it? She ends up leading a pointless existence and the suggestion is that her whole struggle may well have been pointless. Which while a bitter twist, is OK - except we're not even sure it even happened.
Coin's dead...did the burgeoning new tyranny she was forging die with her? Did Plutarch's brutal fatalism shape an even worse one? We don't know. We're never told what happens. She lives happily ever after, sort of, but suddenly the themes and messages of the Hunger Games series were actually not the point at all? It was all an irrelevant account of one person who in the end didn't do anything important? Maybe that was the point. Maybe it was a meta-existential commentary on the uselessness of life and striving, espousing the postulates of Zeno and Schopenhauer.
If so, it was shit.
I don't feel like I missed the point, I feel like the author did. Or never had one. Or lacked the skill to execute what she was intending.
In fact, I think it's pretty clear what happened, and it's nigh unforgivable. The Coin-as-villain twist, the suggestion that a new leader would be needed in the post-Snow era, everyone always talking up the amazing power that the Mockingjay wielded across the nation...
Collins was going to write a fourth book. Then she got near the end of MJ, decided she couldn't be arsed, and "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies".
Really, did you need the paycheck to release Mockingjay that badly that you had to do that? If you lost the passion to write, fine, leave us with our happy memories of the great "Catching Fire". Don't release a half-baked book that wastes the reader's time and remove the opportunity for you to actually write that epic conclusion one day. If your publisher wouldn't accept your other writings that you WERE still interested in, find another one that will. You will find a taker somewhere to publish anything, a freaking Christmas poem book if you wanted, after the success of Hunger Games.
For shame, Ms Collins.
