reviwed by Glenda Johnson.
Lyn loaned me a copy of the first of this trilogy at the start of the year and I found it quite good. Ihis week I borrowed the set now that she has the others, reread book one, followed immediately by the other two, and sad to say, while I still quite liked book one, I didn’t enjoy the other two and the entire trilogy has gone back to Lyn and I won’t be buying my own. I see why it appeals to teenagers. It’s all angst, blame the parent, how misunderstood the teenager is. Yes, Katniss is competent, courageous, hard-working and responsible. She’s no worse than most would be in her situation. But I couldn’t like her. I suspect that if most of those reading this book and loving it, actually met Katniss, they’d find her a surly pain in the neck.
Like Lyn, I enjoy a good post-holocaust book, or a good distopia, but I like a better ending, and this trilogy doesn’t have it. I found the ending vague, unsatisfying, and unpleasant. I do read other books classified as YA so it isn’t that. I have the Harry Potter series and love it. I have some of Diana Wynne Jones’ YA books and reread them regularly. Ditto Andre Norton, Margaret Mahy, The “Tomorrow When The War began’ series, and a number of YA books by other authors. But there was something about this trilogy that turned me off. Not the brutality of background, the realism, the unlikable characters, no, I think in the end I felt that no matter what was done, no matter how heroically anyone tried, the characters or their descendants were condemned to go around in the same miserable circles forever, endlessly recreating their predecessor’s mistakes. That not only was there no genuine light at the end of the tunnel, but that eventually the tunnel would collapse and bury them. In view of which I won’t bother to see the film because no matter how well that ends, I know what comes next. and that spoils it for me. I know a lot of people enjoyed these books, but I didn’t and I don’t recommend them.