Book 3 is where things finally happen. No more Hunger Games, instead war. All the side entertainments of tactics and games are stripped away and we look in to the heart of The Hunger Games.
I've recently reread all of them, and to my surprise the experience is as enjoyable the first, but in a different way and there is time to notice more and think about more, like how the genius of having a winner is that it forces the people at home to watch every step, hoping that their person might make it home and that all the others die, else their community and maybe humanity.
There are two failures in book 3 though. The first is that after a while it becomes tiring the way Katniss has such a gift for photo-op moments of humanity. In the first two it was natural and unexpected, here the fact that they turn on cameras and see her do it makes it hard to agree, even if it Katniss is that sort of person.
Secondly, a good part of the end involves a lot of people dying on a messy and ill-defined mission. People die in war, often without point and it's horrible and confusing, but all the way through the Hunger Games has made us confront unpleasant aspect after unpleasant aspect about humanity (which given that on a practical level we haven't physically evolved past everything we've done in the past, so in a destroyed culture and the wrong education most of the events seem verifiably plausible) and I think this is maybe too much trauma, one step too far. The third(and second) book is a dicator on the seat of dethroning doing everything he can to break the mind of a little girl, it's interesting and horrific but we need some good things to survive the reading.
But in the end it pays off, in a messy sad horrible way, with scars that are never truly gone. There are some huge character points here which validate everything that comes before, big big events happen which throws a lot of things into a different light and they were all brave moves. But in the end it's resolved and it shows us things about ourselves. It gives a reason for not taking 'kill one person to save two' to it's ultimate extreme. And on the second reading, I realise in one completely brilliant final paragraph it finally even explains why we should ever put ourselves through reading the Hunger Games. And that was worth re-writing this review for.
Book 3: Rereview
Book 3 is where things finally happen. No more Hunger Games, instead war. All the side entertainments of tactics and games are stripped away and we look in to the heart of The Hunger Games.
I've recently reread all of them, and to my surprise the experience is as enjoyable the first, but in a different way and there is time to notice more and think about more, like how the genius of having a winner is that it forces the people at home to watch every step, hoping that their person might make it home and that all the others die, else their community and maybe humanity.
There are two failures in book 3 though. The first is that after a while it becomes tiring the way Katniss has such a gift for photo-op moments of humanity. In the first two it was natural and unexpected, here the fact that they turn on cameras and see her do it makes it hard to agree, even if it Katniss is that sort of person.
Secondly, a good part of the end involves a lot of people dying on a messy and ill-defined mission. People die in war, often without point and it's horrible and confusing, but all the way through the Hunger Games has made us confront unpleasant aspect after unpleasant aspect about humanity (which given that on a practical level we haven't physically evolved past everything we've done in the past, so in a destroyed culture and the wrong education most of the events seem verifiably plausible) and I think this is maybe too much trauma, one step too far. The third(and second) book is a dicator on the seat of dethroning doing everything he can to break the mind of a little girl, it's interesting and horrific but we need some good things to survive the reading.
But in the end it pays off, in a messy sad horrible way, with scars that are never truly gone. There are some huge character points here which validate everything that comes before, big big events happen which throws a lot of things into a different light and they were all brave moves. But in the end it's resolved and it shows us things about ourselves. It gives a reason for not taking 'kill one person to save two' to it's ultimate extreme. And on the second reading, I realise in one completely brilliant final paragraph it finally even explains why we should ever put ourselves through reading the Hunger Games. And that was worth re-writing this review for.