piratequeen

Not as strong as book 1. Better than the rehash that was book 2. It feels like a series padded out to sell more books; a pared down book 1 + 3 could have been a great standalone novel.

The story of this volume felt a little convoluted and contrived toward the end; it took me about as long to struggle through the last two or three chapters and the epilogue as it had to read most of the rest of the book.

By the end of this series, I was so tired of the Twilight-style fandom romance wars (which seem to miss the point of the story completely) that I was rooting for Katniss to die tragically as a martyr, rather than choose a love interest.

I liked Gale the best out of the three main characters, and he didn't get a terribly satisfying ending. I don't particularly like Katniss or Peeta as characters, but I'm glad Collins didn't shy away from showing the horrors of war through their eyes, and wasn't afraid to show us a relationship between damaged people, not a resilient, perfect Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu romance.

I vastly preferred the secondary characters, many of whom, such as Cinna, don't survive this series, sadly.

The deaths of Finnick and Prim were especially WTF-inducing. I loved Finnick and Annie's reunion, and to tear them apart so soon after their wedding made me cringe. I also wasn't prepared to like Johanna, the bitch from book 2, as mush as I did in this book.