The final book in the series, with the districts at war with the Capitol, and with Katniss as the spiritual leader of the rebellion.

I was so looking forward to this book, and I am so disappointed. The first two books were well paced, with well-drawn central characters and a positive, hopeful, rebellious tone. Collins was very adept in the first two books to balance the tension and the violence with lighter scenes and humorous moments.

But this books feels like it is from a completely different series. In this series no, a single smart resourceful person can't win an impossible game by changing the rules; she can't throw off oppression by being clever and playing her oppressor's game better than they play it; and no matter how much she escapes being used and manipulated there will always be someone else around to use and manipulate her more.

Good grief.

Katniss, our strong, self-assured protagonist, spends the first half of the book paralyzed by crushing self-doubt and PTSD, while the war rages on around her. Much of the action takes place while she is unconscious in the hospital (and is later explained to her), or elsewhere while she watches it on TV. This makes for an extremely slow and frustrating pace. I kept wondering when Katniss was going to stand up and behave like Katniss. When she was going to actually be the protagonist of her own damn series.

The good news is that the pacing picks up in the second half of the novel. The bad news is that so does the violence. Although there are a large number of new characters introduced in this part of the book, we don't get to know anyone well enough before they are quickly killed off, along with some of the more interesting, well-drawn and well-loved characters from the previous books. The second half of the books spirals away into unrelenting barrage of bombs and monsters and war and death, culminating in the explosion that kills Katniss's sister and puts Katniss unconscious into the hospital and in anguish once again.

By the time the book gets around to the final denouement, when Katniss lies to the council to get close enough to the president in order to kill her, I honestly didn't really care what Katniss did. She could have stripped naked and danced for all I cared. As it was I had to read that passage three or four times to figure out exactly what was going on -- what Katniss was planning, if she was lying or if she was just giving up. I know lots of other people who were very unclear at that point, who did not know that this was a turning point for Katniss in the book. If this is the one point where Katniss does manage to make her own decisions, where she stops being manipulated by everyone around her, then this one passage needed to be written far more clearly and strongly and with a lot more passion. But at this point in the book there is no passion at all; it is all just numb and empty.

Which brings us to the happy romantic ending, which is the saddest, flattest, most nihilistic happy ending I think I've ever read. Gale turns into a monster and kills her sister to win the war, and then vanishes with no closure or confrontation to the triangle. Her mother goes off somewhere to I forget, but there's also no goodbye scene or closure. Poof. Peeta is there, but then Peeta has had about a half dozen different personalities throughout this book, so sure, why not be the loving husband. And, oh, Peeta wants kids so she has kids even though she will always be dead inside, the end.

Good grief.

I've read that Suzanne Collins wanted to write a book about war, about how war is incredibly damaging to people and how it would have an unbelievably horrible effect on a 17 year old girl. And I suppose if that was her goal than she suceeded swimmingly at that. But the first two books are so hopeful -- that Katniss would succeed against all the odds against her -- and for this book to turn so unrelentingly dark, so hopeless, just seems to me to be contrary to the feel of the series as it was presented in the first two books.

I feel betrayed, and I wish I hadn't read it at all.