Holy crap, this book is amazing! I loved The Hunger Games, but this one just picks the story right back up and takes it to a new level. It is kind of like the progression of the Harry Potter story where each book you get a bigger picture of this entire world that the author has created. Don't want to give too much away, but there are some major twists and turns that I never saw coming. You get to meet a lot of the former HG victors and it's really interesting to see how they're described and characterized to show how damaged they are. The Peeta/Gale thing is seriously breaking my heart.
One thing I always look for in a series is how the author handles the generally inevitable and awkward recap of the previous book. I think I've been fascinated by this ever since my Sweet Valley Twins days when chapter 2 of every book was the explanation of how Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield were identical twins with long honey-blonde hair and aquamarine eyes and matching dimples in their left cheeks, and even though they looked exactly alike, they were really very different b/c Elizabeth was the bookish type-a school journalist and Jessica was the outgoing social butterfly, but of course they were best friends too. Oh and by the way, here's 5 more pages about their one-story ranch house, parents, older brother Steven, all their friends, Todd Wilkins, and a brief history of the Unicorn Club. I never checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of these sections were just copied and pasted between the 150 different books in the series. Obviously most authors don't take it to that extreme, but I just have no sympathy for people who might actually need that information. If you don't read the books in order, then that's your fault and don't take up any of my time bringing you up to speed. That being said, I thought that Suzanne Collins handled that aspect of the story very well - she tried to give info about what had happened in book 1 throughout instead of all at once, but there were definitely some places where it seemed forced. We'll see what book 3 is like because it's up next - can't resist!
Ahhhh I love HG! Are you Team Peeta or Team Gale? Mockingjay was amazing amazing. When you're finished, check out this post (which has major spoilers):
ReplyDeletehttp://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com/bookshelves_of_doom/2010/08/mockingjay-hunger-games-3-suzanne-collins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fbookshelves_of_doom+(bookshelves+of+doom)
Thoughts? I agree with nearly all of it.