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Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay was probably the most anticipated release of 2010. Tens of thousands of fans all over the world eagerly awaited the conclusion of the bestselling Hunger Games series, a wait made that much more breathless after the cliffhanger ending of Catching Fire. The hype that surrounded this release was almost as if an eighth Harry Potter book had been released, with blog tours, interviews, predictions, midnight release parties and book launches happening across the world as the August 24 release date approached.

I was one of those excited fans. I remember feeling anxious as the week of the release arrived, exchanging predictions with other fans and jointly planning “Mockingjay Leaves” (the book release was on a weekday). I squealed with delight when I saw that the Kindle edition was available the day before the hardcover was released here, downloading the sample and devouring it so I could have an idea how the end would begin. When I finally received my copy I reserved the next few days to reading only Mockingjay.

If you haven’t read The Hunger Games or Catching Fire, the spoiler warning starts here.

“There is no District 12.” These were Gale’s last words in Catching Fire, which left readers wondering what exactly happened to Katniss’ home town. Mockingjay opens with Katniss staring at the ashes of her district, a month after she has been taken out of the arena and had been living in District 13. The rebellion against the Capitol has begun, but cannot go full scale because it's missing one last ingredient: they need Katniss to be the Mockingjay, the symbol of the movement. Katniss, reluctant at first, eventually agrees. She finds herself smack in the center of a dangerous power play between her enemies and her so-called “allies,” most especially District 13’s President Coin. While she tries to fulfill her role as the Mockingjay, Katniss starts to question the motivations of the people around her - and her own motives as well - finding herself a pawn in a web of manipulation that could cost her life and the lives of the people she cares for.

Mockingjay takes its cue from its predecessors and comes out as another adrenaline pumping read. Collins’ writing is captivating from the start, sucking the readers deep into the even bleaker world that Panem has become, fleshing out the mysterious District 13. Mockingjay’s pacing leaves readers breathless at the end of each chapter as the author dishes out one cliffhanger after another. LA Times compared the action scenes to “a battlefield akin to Iraq” – even the innocent aren’t spared from the carnage and the brutality of war. There are deaths that take place, but I’m sure readers expected this already - the Hunger Games is not a "happy" series, and Mockingjay is the most brutal of the three books, so much so that some readers are reduced to staring at a wall for a time to recover themselves after the book's last line, before actually starting to process all that transpired. I know I did the same thing – although, in my case, that may have been because I felt that the ending was rushed, and I wasn’t sure I understood what happened.

As you might infer from that last remark, this book is not without some flaws. While I believe the book is very readable and engaging despite its rushed ending, I felt that there was something a bit inconsistent with the portrayal of the characters. I agree with this observation that Katniss didn’t feel like the same girl from first two books. When did she become so passive and reactive? Where did the hunter Katniss go? This inconsistency with the portrayal of Katniss’ character is the subject of  a big debate among the fans, torn between how her character was written and between how great she could have been if she rose up to the challenge as she had before. While, fortunately, Collins didn’t use a deus ex machina element in the novel, there seemed to be a few too many scenes where Katniss is removed from the action, only "waking up" when things are over.

Katniss’s boys, however, shone very well in this novel. Gale grew into his role as a real rebel, using his knowledge of hunting on an actual battlefield. Peeta, while in a sorry state at first, was able to live up to what readers have come to expect from him. As for who Katniss picked in the end? Without going into specific spoilers, let me say that I was disappointed -- not because of who she picked, but because of the circumstances surrounding that choice. It was a cop-out, as this reader says.

While I found the pacing of the book consistent with the first two, in other respects Mockingjay was a huge paradigm shift from its predecessors, so it was inevitable that some people would be disappointed. I was at first, but I eventually accepted the ending. The series is about rebellion and war, and, let’s face it: war is hell. No one comes out of a war unscathed, even the heroes.  I think Collins chose the most realistic path for Katniss given her character and everything she was fighting for. This is similar to what Katherine Applegate did at the end of her series Animorphs. To quote Ms. Applegate: “…even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.”

This is the perfect example of a book where one must just let go of expectations and just enjoy the story for what it is. It isn’t my favorite book, but despite that, I think Mockingjay is a good ending for a series that I’ve loved during the past year. It’s not perfect, but I can't say that Suzanne Collins didn’t deliver in the end.

Mockingjay is available in hardbound for a promo price of P530 in all major bookstores nationwide. The UK edition of the paperback is available in Fully Booked.