Vive la revolution

Mockingjay arrived very quickly (I'd like to say, as usual with Amazon, but they've managed to screw up two of my orders since then (actually, maybe three; one looks suspicious)), and I blitzed through it a couple of nights ago.

As expected, this is where the revolution became an open one, and tracks the course of the revolution.

Kat is wanted to be the face of the revolution, which she eventually agrees to do. One good thing about this book was the process by which that occurred. I liked that it was not an instantaneous thing, that she had to work up the courage to do it.

In fact, I liked almost everything about the book. The last twenty or so pages were fairly weak, but it was really amazing up to that point. My gripes at the end are that I didn't like the way the final mission was handled, didn't think much of the parachute stratagem, and thought ending in obscurity was a bit... unlikely.

The issue with the final mission is that I don't see why so much of the book would be dedicated to a bunch of people dying in a failed attempt. I guess I can see some possible reasons (wanting to show the horror, and frequent lack of glory, in war, perhaps), but from a story perspective, it seems odd, at best. I suspect the ending will be changed pretty significantly in the movie, because of that. Hollywood really doesn't like that style of ending (and, to be honest, this is a case where I didn't like it either).

The parachute stratagem bugged me because, while I understand why they'd have that strategy available, when and how they used it made no sense whatsoever. It wouldn't help militarily, and you certainly don't set up something like that to kill your own medical staff. Especially when you don't have a surfeit of such staff.

I also don't understand why Kat survived. We're told the President wanted her dead, the President had her helpless, and she ended up alive somehow. I can't explain that part. It's not like it would have been difficult: order one group to kill her, tell another group that the first did it under someone else's orders, and have the second group kill the first. Then you've got the martyr that you want, along with some heroes (the second group) who can be useful after everything is over.

And having Kat fade back into obscurity just seemed like more than a bit of a stretch. Too many other people would have wanted to use her, in one of dozens of ways, for her to ever be left alone. Ever if she never regained her mental stability, she would have been too useful to let go.

Anyway, despite all that, I thought it was a very good book, and a very good series. I'll probably look out for Ms Collins' other books.