Nessa's Thoughts

At first, I was very sceptical of the Hunger Games series, as I am with a lot of young adult literature. I believed it to be a rip-off of Battle Royale and The Running Man and basically ignored it until I decided one day to actually give it a fair chance.That was two weeks ago. In the space of these two weeks, I have read all three of the novels, and been left incredibly excited for the movie, and for any spin-off literature Suzanne Collins may write in the future.I'll try to keep the gushing to a minimum, but since the third book was so good, I may ramble once or twice. With that being said, let's-a-go. :DThe third book in the series, Mockingjay starts us off in District 13. District 12 was only recently fire-bombed and completely decimated by the Capitol, so Katniss has had to adjust to life in the heavily militarized underground district whilst a rebellion crashes down around her, a rebellion that she is now the face of, whilst Peeta suffers at the torturous hands of the higher-ups in the Capitol.That is, until they get Peeta back, and he turns out to be a shell of his former self, specially brainwashed by an extremely potent venom to fear the girl he once loved. Katniss has to help rehabilitate her friend, appear on camera making threats to the Capitol (with the help of intrepid tech-head Beetee), and become a soldier to help the rebellion through its final days.While this volume was not quite as thrilling as Catching Fire or as interesting as The Hunger Games, it was still a solid adventure that made me (pardon the awful pun) hunger for more. It's definitely the best young adult dystopia series out there.The ending was a fairly horrible, gut-wrenching, knife-in-the-stomach twist. Oh goodness, I was not expecting that. The epilogue made me smile in a weird way, simply because I'm happy to see that the world is now back to a relative state of normalcy, even if it's going to be a slow but sure start.Mockingjay gets a very good 4/5, just like its predecessor, Catching Fire, the point only being taken off for some of the parts which dragged. Don't get me wrong, it was always very thrilling (Collins obviously has a flair for writing heart-pounding action sequences), but there were a few moments of lag every now and again... You could maybe say it was like playing Call of Duty or Unreal Tournament on multiplayer when the net connection begins to slow a little, except for the fact I've never played these games and have only the frustrated shouts of my brother in the other room to go off of. :P