It is done. Nearly 1200 pages in less than 4 days. Does that give you any sense about my passion and involvement with this series? It started with The Hunger Games, continued with Catching Fire, and finally culminated with Mockingjay. In this series, Suzanne Collins created a very real, very haunting future for our world and what happens to humanity in post-apocalyptic North America. In the first two books in this series, we witness the nightmarish existence of Katniss Everdeen. Every instant she must decide who is friend and who is foe, who she must kill or form an alliance with. A single act of defiance against the establishment in the Hunger Games and she has become the face of the revolution, the mockingjay.The surviving Districts have now taken back control from the Capitol. Katniss' district was fire bombed and only a fraction have survived. They have been taken in by District 13 that was thought to be destroyed over 70 years ago. However, they have been biding their time, waiting for the right moment to strike back. Collins brings us to understand President Snow of Panem as a cruel, heartless dictator. He has survived for so long by ruthlessly killing anyone who opposes him, or represents a real or imagined threat. In contrast to President Snow is President Coin of District 13. She seems like a stable, emotionless leader who has done what needed to be done for her District to get by. But along the way, we find out she is just as sadistic, just as power hungry as her counterpart in Panem.
Katniss eventually comes to fully understand that President Coin will just repeat the cycle of human suffering and domination all over again. Replacing Snow with Coin is not a step up, but a step back. Katniss does what she has to do to stop this evil seed from being planted. Ultimately most everyone that she cares about has been killed in the revolution. She is allowed to go back to District 12 and go on with rebuilding her life. She is not alone. Her Peeta is with her, and eventually so are her little boy and girl. Just when you think that humanity never really learns from the mistakes of its past, you find that maybe they have in a way.
