An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

This review contains SPOILERS

Every time I've read The Hunger Games trilogy I get tired by the end. I think part of the problem is the three act structure of every book. In the first one we get to the action pretty quickly, but then in the second and third there's so much set up before anything happens. The last one should have moved faster than it did, but the beginning is bogged down by Fake War Politics (Fake Politics are one of my least favorite things to read about unless they're in a book by Megan Whalen Turner).

I also need a version of The Hunger Games trilogy without the word excellent ("excellent knife," "excellent wound") or fabulous ("fabulous bows"). Speaking of bows, what's the point of Katniss's very special bow in this book? It's supposedly "alive" but we never learn what that means and it doesn't seem to do anything. Explosive arrows I get, a purring bow... not so much.

I've always had a problem with the deaths in the book. It feels like Peeta and Gale get free passes so the tension of the love triangle will last the whole book. It might have been more interesting if one of them had died (maybe Finnick would have gotten a pass then. I'm most bitter about his and Prim's deaths). Actually all the books would have been more interesting if 1. Katniss were a lesbian or 2. her relationship with Prim were the main focus over Peeta and Gale.

This book is also full of explaining. So much explaining. It makes sense in The Hunger Games, but I'm not even talking about explaining Panem or the Capitol. There's a whole essay on The Hanging Tree as if readers are too thick to understand a very simple song. And then every time the damn song comes up again, Collins must bash us over the head with the meaning behind it.

The Hunger Games isn't a bad YA trilogy. But Mockingjay just always kills any enthusiasm I managed to hang onto after reading the first book which is so good. But the the ending is disappointing.