Mockingjay: Book Three of the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I started reading this series, because many of my students listed it as a book they had read “for fun” as opposed to something read for an assignment. I thoroughly enjoyed volume one – The Hunger Games. Several of these same students told me they didn’t like the second volume – Catching Fire – so I waited until I read this, the third before finishing my rating of the series.

Volume Two admittedly lacked the excitement of the first, but, as I began the third, I realized Parts 2 and 3 were really more closely related than I thought. Catching Fire told the story of the aftermath of the hunger game in the first, and Mockingjay, the third volume, follows close on the heels of the second.

Anyone who read the first and liked it will undoubtedly enjoy two and three. Considering the series as a whole, I would give it four and a half stars. I took some away, because I did not like the ending very much. I know this is fantasy/dystopian literature, but I think the bounds were stretched a bit in Part Three.

Overall an interesting, fun, and quick read.

--Chiron, 7/26/12