And so we came to the end (of a series)

Book: Mockingjay

Author: Suzanne Collins

Published: 2010 (Scholastic)

Pages: 390

Let's get straight to the ending! That's all I ever wanted from this trilogy anyway.

I liked it. I thought it was mildly shocking in a way that made sense. I loved how it leaned hard on the theme of "who exactly is the bad guy here?" that this book spent like 300 pages developing. There were enough broad hints about SPOILER ALERT NO SERIOUSLY I AM ABOUT TO DESTROY ALL YOUR SURPRISES District 13 President Coin that Katniss shooting her instead of Snow was an inspired last-minute instinct.

But the lead-up to it reminded me of watching Doctor Who and noticing that they're just now getting into trouble when there's 10 minutes left in the episode. These storylines can go two ways: a rushed ending or a two-parter. Obviously the two-parter scenario is ideal because it means I have a built-in excuse to watch more Doctor Who, but Mockingjay made me considerably more nervous because there was for sure nothing else after I finished it.

And it manages to wrap up in a timely fashion by one of the most annoying tropes I've noticed in this series: Katniss getting seriously injured and whisked away to treatment in the middle of the action. She, and consequently we, hear about the most interesting bits of battles and such through second-hand pure exposition.

I thought the whole point of her being the Mockingjay was that she would be put in exactly the right place to witness and show everything as it was happening. I expect that from all my protagonists, guys.

I did love how the rebels were aware of and could use media manipulation just as well as the Capitol. That's been my favorite part of the series and really put the focus on the ambiguity of each side, like, if they use the same propaganda techniques--if they both use propaganda at all, how can we tell which side tells the truth? How can we tell if there's a truth at all? I totally couldn't, and I never fully trusted those District 13 bastards anyway.

But oh my god did I want there to be so much more of a psychological showdown with President Snow! He showed how good he is at being creepy with flowers--flowers, y'all! And then when Katniss didn't shoot him, I was all, "OH SNAP [regrettably, I really do say this out loud; am trying to train it out of myself] they're going to psyche each other out SO HARD for the COUNTRY!"

Nope. He dies choking and getting crushed like two minutes later, and she hears about this from...say it with me now...her hospital bed. 

Now we get to talk about Peeta and how every time I hear someone say his name out loud, I think of Elaine and her "Stellaaaaaaaah!" He felt plot-device-y in this one. And my apologies; I reread Catching Fire while waiting to borrow Mockingjay, and holy crap is there for sure some teen love angst going on there. I missed it because Collins is so dang good at plot. I forgive her so much for that. And honestly, Peeta and Katniss bonded in blood. Twice. They know the most horrible experiences of each others' lives, and they know what the other went through, and they know just exactly how much they both need a little peace. Gale sounds like he's hotter than Peeta, though.

So what'd you guys think of how this series ended? How'd you think the series worked as a whole?

O my brothers

Book: A Clockwork Orange

Author: Anthony Burgess

Published: 1986 (this edition--Norton Paperbacks)

Pages: 212

There's nothing to fear about this book; the slang is omnipresent but easily penetrated, while at the same time enough to keep the violence at an abstract distance. Which I guess is one facet of the point, another of course being the extra chapter that  was originally left out of the American edition (and, consequently, Stanley Kubrick's movie adaptation).

(Side note: After reading this, I want to watch the Kubrick movie to see how it stacks up to The Great Shining Debate, which is when Liberry Tom says Kubrick's The Shining is a great movie because it's shot so well and I say it sucks because it completely misses the point of the source material.)

I wasn't super shocked by anything in here. It's a fairly straightforward plot: brutal young man gets off on doing violent things to people, gets caught, gets put into mind-altering therapy that gives him visceral reactions to violence, tries to get right back into it, gets depressed and tired of it. 

That's not to say I didn't like reading about all that. It's still a fascinating journey, and it's all in the narrator. This book is one of the strongest arguments I've read for the importance of unique character voice. Alex goes from simple to sick to existential, all his confusion wrapped in his comforting blanket of slang whose familiarity isn't nearly enough to protect him from the changes forced on his emotions. He remains a sympathetic character in a way that makes me feel like a terrible person for saying that, which means he's very well-written. A well-written sociopath.

The last chapter--I don't see how it's such a controversy. It's the logical, if somewhat muted, continuation of Alex's life. Leaving it out could be seen as approving such violence that he's gotten back into, or at least saying that it's an inevitable part of decaying society, but it's made clear that even though he's pushed past his conditioning, Alex won't be able to sustain his sociopathic behavior for much longer without it taking an even more crushing toll.

Anyway, go read this and see if you can tease out the metaphor for clockwork oranges. I didn't get that bit.

Blood and roses

Book: Catching Fire

Author: Suzanne Collins

Published: 2009 (Scholastic)

Pages: 391

I read this entire book in one non-moving Sunday when I woke up at 7am without any provocation. To compress the frustration I feel at my body for adjusting to an early-bird work schedule, I made it sit still and plow through this second book in the series. 

As far as punishment being something unpleasant, this failed miserably.

It's a great ratcheting up of the tension that was sometimes lacking in the first. It's a good, paced-out reveal of the governmental underpinnings and the revolutionary unease that I wanted to see more of in the first. It's an awesome rebuilding of the Games--remember my complaint from last time that the first described Games arena could've been in my old back yard? Yeah, well, they fixed that. With water. And specifically sectioned torments. And really effective use of--how much can I reveal without giving the whole shebang away? I sort of assume that everyone's read this before me, because that's generally just how these things work in my reading habits of waiting until entire series is out/at the library/in really cheap paperback. 

Mild spoilers ahoy, okay?

Anyway, the arena is amped UP to Death by Tropical Island and they manage to punish Katniss for her rebellion by pulling some convoluted strings in the next Games to get her in them and of course Peeta jumps in there with her, somewhat unnecessarily, but whatever, they work well together in a survivalist way. 

They are still each a little bland for me to care about his declarations of love and her confusion, but like I said about the first one, at least when Katniss's thoughts go around and around, it's about survival and not manufactured torment over something that won't matter in a week. IN A WEEK SHE COULD BE DEAD.

My absolute favorite scene is when President Snow comes to visit Katniss at her winner's house and he pretends it's to congratulate her but it's really to intimidate her and she notices he smells like blood and roses. That is her first whiff of a rebellion that's raging out of control and that he holds her responsible for and oh shit, she's going to have to nut up or shut up in a huge, world-changing way.

...And then the rebellion kind of puts her up as a martyr without asking first, and it's sort of awkward and terrifying to her to see mockingjays flashed all over the place out of her control, and neither one of us (her as a character or me as a reader) ever gets even a quarter picture of the rebellion, which is annoying but I think will be address in Book 3 after the return of Gail and his announcement at the end of this Book 2. 

Side note: Still no annoying love triangle angst! Woo! But, again, I think that is going to get segued the hell into it in Book 3. Sigh. BUT I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS (to everything else).

Self-aware dystopia lives up to hype

Book: The Hunger Games

Author: Suzanne Collins

Published: 2008 (Scholastic)

Pages: 374

This is how I reacted to reading pressure when my boyfriend said he’s going to see the movie on its opening weekend and would I like to go with him?:

Because it meant I chucked my semi-cherished plans of keeping indie cred by reading Battle Royale instead of this popular series first. And of course I had to read the book before we see the movie, which pushed back my increasingly panicked plans of not adding any new books to the pile I want to get through, dammit.

It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay, because The Hunger Games reads fast and well, and it’ll be at least another year before the second book gets turned into a movie my boyfriend’ll want to go see on opening weekend, and too much indie book cred will make this blog insufferable anyway.

So! Katniss! She’s cool. She’s less the bold new feminist icon that reviews have told me about than an almost gender-neutral kid just focused on survival. That’s a refreshing change. Her skills and interests are presented as completely normal for her age, place, and family social status; she’s equal to Gale’s skills and nobody’s surprised about that. They just tell her to bring more illegal squirrel next week. She’s protective in a non-maternal way that sometimes hurts her own interests. She knows her own strengths and relies on them far more than exploiting her weaknesses to rely on other people. She can hunt and track but good fuck, don’t let her heal or cook anything more complicated than a roasted leg.

She’s cool, but the world building is the real star around here.

Collins is great at letting just the right amount of detail unspool around major events that Katniss knows well but is experiencing in person for the first time. I wonder if all the male tributes have to get waxed down for the presentation, too. All the new terms feel naturally descriptive but still memorable, the history revealed is enough to know reasons for actions but little enough to want to know more, and the action scenes I could totally follow in my head. Brava. 

A few “but…”s, though:

• I wish the games would’ve been played in a more interesting arena. Of all the landscapes possible, this year’s was the one that sounds the most like the backyard I had before I moved into an apartment.
• The fuck were those mutts about near the last bit of the games?! Please let there be a science lab raiding/rescuing scene in later plot.
• I’m dreading reading more about Peeta and Gale and Katniss as a triangle. The love story angle was SO GOOD in this book, meaning it was an ingenious strategy to act like it was an act for the cameras and Peeta’s reveal that he wasn’t acting was, duh, not a surprise to any of us but played as a genuine one to Katniss. That was handled well but I fear it will turn into hormonal teenage angst just as I celebrate how free this series is of that crap.
• Katniss’s inter musings about strategy got a little circular and reminded me of said teenage angst in books where the girl is worrying about what to do with/about a boy. But the higher stakes here (actual, physical, nobody-will-help-my-family death, as opposed to oh-my-god-I-want-to-die-over-this-socially-embarrassing-situation death) make it tolerable for a far longer time.
• Now that Collins has built a world, will she be as good at tearing it down? Rebellion to come, I guess. I plan on reading Catching Fire and Mockingjay back to back because my boyfriend says Catching Fire ends on a much more “what the fuck just and is going to happen?” cliffhanger than this one did.   

 Also, a point to remember: this isn’t a hard book. It’s solid YA plotting with fleshed-out characters and that’s a very good, enjoyable thing, but reading the whole triology in two days won’t get you into Harvard or anything. It will merely prepare you for life in a Capitol-controlled wilderness when you have to fight to death. Argue amongst yourselves as to which is more important a skill.