Mockingjay, I Hate You

The last book of the Hunger Games series was a disappointment.

It wasn't just that I thought Katniss ended up with the wrong guy.  I mean, real life happens like that, right?  But she had to end up with Haymitch, the drunk who was a few decades her senior.  And that was even after he killed her mother in a drunken rage.  I suppose it's a good lesson in forgiveness.  But did she learn anything?  She just became a drunk herself and married him because he was the only one willing to try to repopulate District 12 after it was burned to the ground.  It certainly made me re-analyze every conversation with Haymitch in the last 2 books when he finally confessed, in the closing pages of book 3, that he'd always been attracted to Katniss.

When Peeta was killed in battle by a mutt that was a 12-foot tall mockingjay with a lizard tail and eyes remarkably similar to Gale's, I thought, "Well, I suppose it's best they didn't end up together, anyway."

And Gale wasn't such a jerk after all.  I was grateful for that development above all others.  He showed such kindness, and such composure under pressure.  He downed people with his arrows and then prayed over their bodies.  Every time!  It brought in an element of the spiritual that I wasn't expecting.  When Peeta died, I thought, "Oh, good!  Katniss and Gale will end up together!"  But in the end I respected Gale's choice to become a celibate monk, roaming from shattered district to shattered district, spreading the message of the Gospel.  Go, Gale!

The stolen kiss between President Snow and President Coin, leader of the Rebel movement, was unexpected.  I couldn't decide if it was a genuine kiss or not.  I mean, I think it was, but then she stabbed him through the heart so that she could take over power.  And that kinda muddied the waters a little.  The peek we get of her tattoo, the one that was probably a profile shot of President Snow, or "George, my Love," as she calls him, decided for me:  She really did love him.  It's a sad tale of tortured love.

But the part that disappointed me the MOST was that Katniss was still a whiner.  I tired of her seemingly endless indecision and self-pity.  Not saying I would have handled it better, but I hope I wouldn't have married a drunk in the end as a way to run away from it all.  Ah, who am I kidding?  I would have ended up a drunk, too. 

Suzanne Collins, couldn't you have answered some of the questions you brought up in books 1 and 2?  No?  Did you know YOURSELF what the answers were?  I'm starting to think that you didn't.  Bummer.