The third (and not final) installment of the Hunger games book-trilogy will arrive in cinemas this week!
And the stakes couldn’t be higher. After the events in Catching Fire a full scale rebellion has broken out, which is turning Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) into the symbol of said revolution – the titular Mockingjay.
While The Hunger Games left me quite unimpressed Catching Fire turned me into a total fan of this Young Adult series. Yet despite my optimism for the future installment(s) I kept hearing what seemed to be the general consensus:
That Mockingjay was by far the worst of the three Hunger Games books and that it was a complete letdown for fans of the series.
So there I was: excited for a new movie which was already touted as a big letdown by the readers. Did this mean that Hunger Games was already past his prime right when I started to get into the fun? Ready for the inevitable disappointment I got my hands on a copy of the final book Mockingjay so that I could judge for myself if I should stop being excited for the series.
Having finished the book within a few days I was confident in two things:
- That splitting Mockingjay into two parts can be done without it feeling unnecessary (although it could easily be done in one movie).
- That Mockingjay was infact my favorite of the three stories.
So I thought it was about time to make a stand for a book which in my eyes has a quite undeserved reputation. A book which in my mind completely transcends the first two installments and transforms a quite good series into a very mature anti-war drama which avoids a surprising amount of clichés.