I Finished "Mockingjay" And I Feel Weird

In the end, I did not love Mockingjay, and neither, really, did the Slate book club. (Spoilers galore there, but also, it’s clear they’re all a little baffled.) The book suffers from a very admirable impulse by the author to not give us any wish fulfillment or narrative thrill. Significant action takes place off-stage! Our heroes are not “protagonists,” which is a fine thing, except perhaps in a revenge-action YA book. (Even I did want a little agency out of our agents!) And every character in the book is exhibiting advanced PTSD. What does get recounted is rather profoundly grim: flying baby limbs, madness, gore, murder, you name it. It’s fascinating that this very popular series is so terrifically adverse to being popular or well-liked. Or, you know, is not adverse to having really impressively horrific bloodbaths every other page. Kudos!