My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve read a few reviews even before I started on the book. I usually try and not read reviews and even if I do, I don’t particularly get influenced by others’ tastes. So I went ahead and bought it on the kindle. Just like the other two, coz well, it’s a trilogy and it’s good to be complete in that regard.
I am forced to abandon the book at about 59% (mid-way) through it coz it just didn’t appeal to me anymore. I believe the charm of the storyline was primarily the Hunger Games. The zeal, the vulnerability of the citizens of Panem and the children. We were rooting for them, feeling for them and were curious on how the whole story would pan out. The second book was packed and I loved that the games were not really the main setting, but it still hung on. The style still held its charm.
This final book however completely lost it for me. I understand war, but every line, paragraph was so filled and constantly full of events, thoughts and actions that it was getting hard keeping track and even wanting to empathize with te characters.
Some deaths did not make sense, some scenes didn’t provide much value.
I have a good idea of how this will end, but I dont think am hanging on to every word and line anymore. I am going to have to stop and move on to other books.
If you did like Hunger Games, I’d suggest to skip this one. Doesn’t add any value to the characters we once knew.
Edited to add on April 30th 2012
I went ahead and finished the book after all. I expected to feel sorry for the characters, but I didn’t. It just seemed all doomsday anyway, so yes, it wasn’t teh perfect ending to the series. I still stick to the fact that somehow leaving things hanging after the second book would have maintained it’s awe.
I agree with you in the sense it was not as thrilling a read as the other two were, but there was something powerful that I took away from the third book. War is complex, lots of people die who I wish didn’t but that is a result of war, the ‘revolution’ is not always what we hope it is, and no one has a happy ending in war.
Yes, I agree. I wasn’t looking at *war* per se, more as a continuation of her series and where she went with it. Am not sure if war was how the series should have ended.
Rads..there is one thing I find while reading series. If you read them all at one shot, by around the third book, you feel let down no matter how well the author tries. Give it a few months and then try 3 again, you may find a difference.
That is a valid point. Hopefully, I feel something when I pick the it up again. Thanks 🙂