Characters: B-
Writing: B-
Plot: B
Pacing: B
Poignancy: B
Suzanne Collins Hunger Games trilogy could have gone either way for me after its second installment, the disjointed and choppy Catching Fire. Book one, The Hunger Games, was an unflinching speed-read, even if it wasn't particularly inventive or well written. All those problems came to a head with the middle installment, but Collins makes an impressive effort to right them here. The writing improves, just enough. The plotting improves, just enough. The characters — alright, the characters are still either surprisingly dark or totally bland, but I suppose its forgivable. These books were always about plot, and here again, Collins writes like she knows what she's doing.
After Katniss wins her first Hunger Games, wrapping up the main conflict of the first book, Collins was obviously in something of a bind. The hero of the story needed something to do in the second installment, so Collins had her accidentally spark a rebellion — which, it turns out, is a surprisingly passive role anyway. Still lacking anything direct to do with Katniss halfway through, Collins threw her into a second Hunger Games, which helped to develop the action, but not the story or the outside factors shaping it. Finally, in Mockingjay, Collins figures out what to do with the larger world, forcing Katniss to participate in the war against the Capitol as rebellion sweeps across the land. When the bad guys eventually crumble, it feels inevitable and unearned, but it's still exciting. When Katniss and her pals launch one last huge offense against the Capitol itself, it feels satisfying, like the series is at last achieving what it was meant to, even if it's not doing so in particularly groundbreaking fashion.
The real strength of the trilogy was never Collin's originality, whether in the broad scope and direction of the plot, or the little details that provide the mayhem. At its worst, the series could sometimes feel like a video-game, a series of arbitrary problems with arbitrary solutions that the characters never had to work for. What made the trilogy work — especially as a YA series — is how dark Collins was willing to go, and that's really the case here. Mockingjay gets dark. Never particularly visceral or gory, which would have almost been easier; some of the directions the plot takes are unnerving in a subtler, stranger way, things you wouldn't expect to pop up in a story meant for a younger age group. What makes the plot here stand out — to become maybe the best of the trilogy — is how that sense of darkness and cynicism creeps into the background and tone of the story, creating a world where, remarkably, a battle of rebels against their tyrannical government doesn't just turn into an easy case of good versus evil. It would have been simple for Collins to leave out the shades of gray, but she doesn't flinch. The deeper into the story we go, the more clear it is that there are no good guys and bad guys. While Mockingjay may lack the nuance of social critiques like 1984, it also has the good sense to maintain a completely sincere "trust no one" cynicism.
These unexpectedly dark turns help to conceal what remains one of Collin's greatest weaknesses: the dullness of the series' side-characters. As before, Collin's choices as an author remain more interesting than the choices her characters make. Many side plots end in ways that I did not expect at all, despite revealing nothing new or interesting about the characters making those choices. (The love triangle that strung out through the whole trilogy certainly ends differently than I was expecting, without resorting to cheap melodrama.) Ultimately, the trilogy works as a series of action novels, as long as you aren't expecting anything particularly clever. Here in the last book, Collins must have felt obliged to up the ante and add some craziness, but she just doesn't seem to have the imagination for it. The last third of the book reads like a video game, with a silly, extremely-forced series of challenges set up to provide danger to the characters. The big dramatic climax is something of a let-down as well, and kind of nonsensical — odd, considering how tight the action in the series generally was. Collins can't seem to break out of a certain formula of violent adventure sequences, even when those sequences make no sense to the world she's scripting.
Then there's the whole reality-TV angle the series takes — a major background device that I haven't even discussed before, because I honestly don't know what to make of it. Collins seems to be attempting some sort of commentary on war as spectacle, the role of television in both controlling the masses and inspiring them. The idea is there, the basic framework to draw out some kind of statement, but she just never does anything with it. It sits awkwardly at the fringes of the plot, like that weird college dormmate who would come into your room, sit on your bed, and watch you write from over your shoulder, and you were like, "Hey Zach, did you want something?" But he didn't want anything. He was just sitting there, with nothing better to do, like the reality TV subplot of The Hunger Games. There's the assumption throughout the series that everything Katniss does is going to be televised — first for the Capitols' benefit, because I guess they're into that real horrorshow stuff, and later to keep the rebellion going. But once the Capitol is being invaded, the last battles are being fought, who's sitting at home still watching their TV? And why? Everyone we see is described as poor and overworked. No one, in the entire series, is ever shown even watching a television, or owning one — they're just forced to watch some big screens in the town square when the Hunger Games are being broadcast. It feels like Collins is writing a device for our world, not this one — TV shouldn't have much impact on these characters, and she never even attempts to explain why it would.
With the nature of the world around Katniss so unclear, the actions and directions of the plot seem sort of context-less when you think about them too much. Things just happen because, well, they happen. So much here serves the action, makes the danger momentarily more thrilling, but actually reduces the overall coherency of the book. These issues didn't ruin any one of the books or the impact of the series as whole, but they were bothersome enough to keep anything from really resonating with me. I was entertained, but not particularly impressed. Still — if I had kids, I would give them the series. The Hunger Games trilogy may not answer any profound questions, but at least it sort-of, kind-of raises them.
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