Yeah. I dragged myself kicking and screaming through the second book after hating The Hunger Games. For several reasons: for one I was asked to read it and give an opinion by someone, and I also wanted to rant about it on here since I haven't posted in a while. (Dark Angel Season 1 Review Coming Soon!)
If I though The Hunger Games was bad, this sequel is even worse. It failed on all the levels that the first book did, and in addition it also failed to bring anything new. It was the same annoying badly written characters doing the exact same thing one more time. At one point I started to kid myself into hoping that the author was going to do all the things she didn't do in the first book: that she was going to explore the deeply problematic issues associated with the concept of having kids kill each other, that she was going to improve the characterization and world-building, but this did not happen.
I can't say more without spoiling it, you have been warned. SPOILERS AHEAD!
I'm going to continue my review as a series of questions that I have for the author and the readers who loved this:
1) Why has nobody in the whole history of the games considered the option of not trying to kill the other tributes? Clearly the author is trying to make us believe that a genuine rebellion is stirring here, so wouldn't refusal to kill in the arena be the best form of defiance?
2) Is the author really trying to say that the best way to fight back against opression and injustice is through lies? Because the only thing the characters in this story do, other than eat meals and wear clothes which are described in excruciating detail, is to lie. They lie to the audience and to their allies and closest friends. It's not only wrong, it's also completely pointless and in some cases counterproductive.
3) Is Katniss on something that prevents her from thinking straight or having any kind of focus? Withint he space of one paragraph she will go from wanting to rebel and thinking she has no choice anyway to just wanting to save her skin and the save her friends and family to being hopeless and wanting to ask Haymitch for advice, to deciding not to tell anyone anything and lying to them instead. It's painful to go through this story from the POV of such an unbelievably unfocused character.
4) Why is Katniss the Mockingjay? Why does it have to be her? What did she ever do to prove that she was in any way suited to be the symbol or leader of a rebellion? This is idiotic. At the end of the book we find out that the rebellion had no better plan than to rescue Katniss from the Arena - and they didn't care who else died in the process. So her life was not only portrayed as being more important than the dozen or so (much more competent) victors who were with the rebellion, they also couldn't figure out a way to get her out BEFORE the games (and the killing) started.
5) Where did the author come up with the names? There are hundreds of baby name websites out there where she could have found less ridiculous sounding names. There are also hundreds of examples of GOOD made-up names from the wealth of fantasy and sci-fi literature that exists.
6) Why must there be a love triangle?
7) Why on earth didn't somebody shoot the little force-field weak-point things at the start of the games and make their escape that way? Why didn't they all team up and PLAN to do this from the start? *headdesk*
8) Why do we have to see everything in the form of summaries told to us by Katniss at the worst possible moment? Does the author have no concept of flow, of showing rather than telling?
9) What is up with the first person perspective and the present tense? They are frustrating! Especially since they're not well handled at all. It keeps switching from present to past for the flashbacks and back to the present again.
10) Why does this book even exist? No seriously, what happened in this book that was of any importance to the rebellion or Katniss or the reader? They could have just kidnapped her in the hovercraft thing while she was moping around in the woods after her first shot at the hunger games and then we wouldn't have had to go through the whole ridiculous thing all over again.
I will probably read the last book now that I'm here, just to see how much worse it can get.
Let me know what you think and feel free to add more of your own questions, mine is by no means an exhaustive list.
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