Mockingjay is the third and the last book of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. The book was released in 2010 with people expecting even more from the sequel of the two best selling and award winning books. The theme of the book Mockingjay has many aspects like loyalty and trust, betrayal and violence, rebellion and decision making. Suzanne Collins the writer of Mockingjay has portrayed several issues and effects of war in the book like starvation, hardships, deaths and poverty. According to her this was an inspiration from her father who was in the army and has been a part of war in Vietnam.
The story of the novel is the continuation from the previous books The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. The main character of the story Katniss Everdeen who was a young girl in the first book has now grown up to a mature and independent figure. But the story is not about a young girl growing up and the changes in her life. Mockingjay is different! It deals with the war and people involved in it and how millions of people sacrifice their life during the era of hardships and rebellion.
Catching fire which was the preceding book of Mockingjay got concluded with the rescue of the main character Katniss. She is now convinced to become a rebellious figure and stand against the strong ruling authority. She is termed as “the Mockingjay” which is the symbol of rebel. She rescues Peeta and other captives and wishes to kill the President Snow herself. Peeta who was captured in the previous novel and was sincerely in love with Peeta, now believe of Katniss as his enemy as he has been brainwashed while his capture.
The story continues with a lot more adventurous and surprising turns. Some mysteries get solved, few lies are unveiled and some new twists are experienced in Katniss’s journey to get things better and end the Hunger Games by killing the person who is responsible for the whole distress. But who is the one responsible? Is Capitol the real culprit? Who dies and who survived the game of death? What was the real truth behind President Coin? Did Peeta and Katniss got together after all the things that happened between them? To find out all this you should read the best seller award winning novel Catching Fire.
The E-book was released a few days earlier and the hard book of Mockingjay and its audio book both were released on 24 August 2010. The overwhelming response that it received can be judged by the sale of its first week that exceeded 400,000 copies. The novel was generally praised and loved by most of the critics. Ending was appreciated in particular as the suspense came to an end in a very imaginative and planned way. Some of the critics believe that violence in the writing is expressed more than required and some of the threads has lose ends which could have been better explained or finished in an improved manner. Besides all this one thing is for sure that this book is one of the favorite young adult novels and has a lot of excitement, power, emotions, adventure, action and twists stored within. Mockingjay has received innumerous awards like USA today Bestseller, Wall street journal bestseller, Amazon Best Books of 2010, New York Times notable children book of 2010 and many others.