Monday, September 6, 2010

Mockingjay written by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay 3rd book in the Hunger Games Trilogy.
After her rescue by rebels, Katniss reluctantly agrees to become the Mockingjay after Peeta appears on a Capitol propaganda broadcast. As part of a deal, she demands that the leader of District 13, President Coin, grant immunity to all of the victors of the Hunger Games. She also demands the right to kill President Snow herself. In a daring rescue, Peeta and other victors are rescued from the Capitol. However, Peeta has been hijacked: brainwashed using tracker jacker venom to replace memories. He immediately tries to strangle Katniss when he sees her after being rescued.

The rebels take control of the districts and finally begin an assault on the Capitol itself. Katniss eventually becomes a member of squad 451. However, an assault on a "safe" Capitol neighborhood goes wrong, and the survivors of squad 451 flee further into the Capitol with the intent of finding and killing President Snow. Eventually Katniss finds herself pressing on by herself towards Snow's mansion, which has supposedly been opened to shelter Capitol children (but is actually intended to provide human shields for Snow). An apparent Capitol assault kills many of these children and a rebel medical team, including Katniss' sister Prim.

President Snow is tried and found guilty, but when Katniss meets with President Snow, he tells Katniss that the final assault that killed Prim and the children was not from the capitol. Katniss thinks that if this is true, the final assault may have been the result of a plan originally developed by Gale. Katniss doubts this, but still realizes that she will never be able to look at Gale the same way, even though she knows that he was not directly involved with the deaths of the children and Prim.

Katniss remembers a conversation with Snow in which they promised not to lie to each other. She realizes that President Snow was telling the truth. So, when she was to execute Snow, Katniss kills Coin instead. A riot ensues and Snow is found mysteriously dead, having possibly choked on his own blood. Katniss is acquitted due to her apparent insanity and she returns to her home in District 12 and soon after so does Peeta, who plants primroses beside her house in memory of her sister, who was named after the flower.

In the epilogue, Katniss speaks as an adult, more than twenty years later. She is married to Peeta and they have two children. The Hunger Games are over, but she dreads the day her children's innocent world is shattered by learning the details of the games and the war along with their parent's roles in each. When she feels upset, Katniss has taken to counting every good thing that she has seen someone do, which she says is sometimes tedious—but there are worse games.

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