Mockingjay

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Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year: 2010
Genre: Teen/thriller/sci-fi
Rating: 2

The end of a series is supposed to settle the readers' minds, even if it's not a happy ending. We want to see our heroes reach a resting place to nurse their wounds and work their way toward happiness after the battle is over.
But for a hyperactive, ADD plot like Mockingjay's, concluding is synonymous with death. Had Suzanne Collins not committed to a trilogy, she would have probably drawn out Katniss's story for another two books or so, and if it would have helped to pace this novel better, she would have been right to do so. As it stands, Mockingjay reads like twenty climaxes smashed together to make a jarring, heaving, ponderous plot laced with gratuitous gore and little meaning. The only thing that keeps us going is an attachment to the central characters.
At the beginning, we find Hunger Games victor Katniss Everdeen broken, bruised, and confused after her dramatic rescue from the arena and removal to the mythical District Thirteen, which resembles some kind of industrial distopia. Katniss chafes at the rigorous rules of her new home and at the expectations placed upon her to become the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion now seizing Panem. For the past two years, Katniss's presence on national TV has been sparking these seeds of discontent, and now the rebels see her as an icon of hope, of defiance. All she wants to do is go back to District Twelve with Gale Hawthorne and her family, but her home has burned to the ground, her friends either dead or refugees, and Peeta Mellark in captivity in the Capitol.
Katniss, besides being faced with the decision to be the face of the revolution or not, is also faced with that omnipresent question of romance: her best friend Gale, or her fellow victor Peeta. As the violence spins more and more out of her control and she begins to question her own dedication to the cause, the world exerts more pressure on her and on her fellow soldiers, driving their war to the bitter end.
The most interesting thing that Collins does with the idea of revolution is the PR face. Katniss is by no means the great general that the rebels need to command them; she is merely the symbol that they all recognize to keep fighting, and the hard-hearted president of District Thirteen is set on using her as propaganda to propagate her war. The executives of the movement tape clip after clip of Katniss and her team to indoctrinate the people, constantly considering her behavior and how it will affect mass opinion of the war. Katniss knows this and feels ill-used, which is the most complicated emotion in all the books that Collins puts forth: are the deaths of all the people she encourages Katniss's fault?
When it comes to sheer surface entertainment, the Hunger Games series is unrivaled. Loaded with suspense and danger, Mockingjay keeps readers on the edges of their seats and guessing until the end, the plot careening down a wildly twisting path until the conclusion. And it is twisting: any sense of restraint that Collins felt about her violence is suddenly stripped away in her third installment. The first two books were graphic, but there was always a subtle hint of reluctance to kill characters that we had grown attached to. Not so here. Just like her characters, Collins seems to have driven herself to the edge and held her ground strongly enough to kill off rebels that she had written extensively about. This lends the story a feeling of reality-- revolutions are horrifyingly bloody, and many beloved people die every time. It would have been laughable had all of Katniss's allies made it through unharmed.
Oh, do the parallels of the evils of socialism continue. District Thirteen is an eerie shell of Soviet Russia, with toe-trampling rules and over-the-top punishments for tiny crimes. Freedoms are restricted to the bare minimum, and the people don't seem to mind. Only Katniss and Gale, the brave champions of freedoms, are willing to defy the rules of the overbearing society, braving the anger of the ruling powers for the general good.
However, that's the only real parallel. The surface entertainment is about all the value available in Mockingjay; Collins awkwardly skirts around any pithy topics, even if she has set up a perfect situation for them to be explored. One theme that appears over and over again is the question of what it truly means to kill another person. She repeatedly mentions this struggle in Katniss's thoughts throughout all three books, and yet after roughly 1100 pages, we still don't know what it really means. Death after death goes by, and the only one that really comes close to touching that question is Rue's death in the arena in the first book.
(On a side note, does Collins really think she's being clever with her Latin? Maybe for a monolingual society she is, but seriously, I saw the Rome parallel before I even read the book. She didn't need her whole Panem et Circenses bit. Plus, Avox is a really pathetic attempt. When the characters think 'hijack' is an archaic word, how on Earth do they know enough Latin to name various things?)
The most disappointing part of Mockingjay is the ending. With all this colorful, thrilling writing under her belt, one would think that Collins could piece together a conclusion worthy of the characters that she has spent so much time developing, but we're left with a twenty-five page slop that is like staring at grey wallpaper with grey patterns on it. Sure, she's trying to portray a fog of grief, but the writing should induce tears of sympathy, not boredom. Even the epilogue is arbitrary and pointless. The bare facts of how the story ends are sort of bittersweet and touching, but change in pace drops us like a stone into the cold water of the book being over. Something tells me that her publisher was pushing her toward a deadline and she had to crank out an ending.
Altogether, the Hunger Games tells a beautiful, terrible story, filled with characters we can believe in images we won't forget. Perhaps the meaning is meant to come from us as we read. Collins has provided us with a beautiful wilderness of story; it's up to us to make it mean something.
 Mockingjay is available on the Kindle for $5.99, or in hardback from Amazon for $9.86. Because the Hunger Games is such a book of our times, it's worth a read, but don't go in expecting deep thoughts. Consider the series a light weekend thing, but definitely don't read it to your kids. It's a little graphic even for adults.

The Last Prince of Ireland

Title: The Last Prince of Ireland
Author: Morgan Llywelyn
Year: 1992
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 3

Anyone who's been reading this blog for awhile knows that I've got a penchant for history. My grandfather was a professor of history, my sister is a history teacher, my father was a history buff, and my favorite classes in school were always history. In the American school system, we usually focus on the "usual" docket of historical events, meaning European history and American history, with a sprinkling of ancient history thrown in. But what about those parts of the world that we've completely passed over? Those are my passion, my curiosity, my real love of history-- there are so many stories out there, each more fraught with passion and fear than the last. It is our privilege and our duty to learn and share them, to gain a fuller understanding of this wonderful world we live in.
But enough of my ranting, and on to the book of the day-- The Last Prince of Ireland, by Morgan Llywelyn (pronounced a bit like hly-WE-lin).
Based in Ireland during the end of the Elizabethan era, this book follows the journey of Donal Cam O'Sullivan and his thousand followers on their long, hungry, cold march out of the district of Munster, fleeing the wrath of his former friends and kinsmen. Although it takes place over just fifteen days (each chapter covers one day), the story seems much longer than that-- more like a slow fall into ruin and decay. Each day, the ragged survivors lose more friends, more animals, more dignity and more hope, and we can't help but wonder if it would be more of a mercy to let them just give in somewhere along the way. Donal Cam, the commander of his bedraggled and wretched army, wonders the same while struggling to lead them to life.
And yet, we see hope growing between the cracks of despair. From the earliest pages we see a lovestruck Niall spy Maire Ni Driscoll and attempt to win her heart with kindness rather than bravado, even in the depths of starvation and fear. Joan Ni Sweney and her husband, Dermod O'Sullivan, provide a wry sense of humor and determination, struggling onward and depending on one another more and more as their provisions and strength run out. And Orla Ni Donoghue, a strong woman married to Rory O'Sullivan, struggles with the past and her faith as she fights for life and fierce loyalty to her leader.
Although the novel is protracted and somewhat basic in its choice of words, the burning passion of the writer is obvious. He sees Ireland itself in these pathetic survivors, relics of a noble and strong past being exterminated by the betrayal of the modern world. This is the time when Ireland finally succumbs to the rule of the expanding British, whose influence will change and shape Irish culture for the next four hundred years. Llywelyn, while recognizing this force, clearly believes that there is a deep individuality and strength within the Irish people that cannot be extinguished by oppression.
This, too, can be extended to the human soul in general. The factual march of Donal Cam and his survivors is a tribute to that, but Llywelyn's narrative of the horrific suffering and losses of those people in their struggle for that most basic of human rights-- freedom-- is heart wrenching. As the readers, we find ourselves growing more and more attached to characters we know are considered traitors and are sentenced to death, as if that bright glimmer of light just before it goes out is the most beautiful thing that a person can ever be. And despite the fact that they are bony, dirty, and desperate, these people are beautiful, if only for the sheer strength of will that carries them forward.
The whole novel feels like a slow decline into ruin, which may be intentional, but definitely detracts from the book's readability. There is no clear climax, only a long, drawn-out journey to the end. While the story is character-based, this can only carry on to a certain extent before it become dry and-- dare I say it?-- boring. Every tale needs some sort of arc, some sort of rising action, and while this one doesn't lack for battle scenes, it just seems like disaster after disaster before long.
But in the end, The Last Prince of Ireland is still a tale that needs to be told and understood in its fullest, for the true tragedy it is-- a betrayal of trust, and a shift in patriotism. Most of the princes of the island gave up in order to save their houses, which seems pathetic and selfish, but the motives are understandable. While practically foolish, Donal Cam's protest and subsequent rebellion are noble and contain a spirit of pride; we treasure that kind of national pride and look for it in our leaders, which makes Donal Cam a truly full, admirable, nearly tangible character.
Not exactly a best seller or common, I pulled this book off the shelf by pure happenstance and enjoyed it-- it's not a long read at 364 pages. It's actually fairly difficult to find on Amazon, but if you live in a city with a good library, they should have it. You can get a copy from Amazon for $15.00, but the next lowest price was nearly $40. Go figure on obscure books.
History is vital to understanding the present, even if it is obscure history. Every story weaves together to make the present, which makes it vital to appreciate the past before we move toward the future.

The Whiskey Rebels

Title: The Whiskey Rebels
 Author: David Liss
Year: 2008
Genre: Historical fiction/Thriller
Rating: 1

We all believe that we know what America is, don't we? After living here our whole lives and being so saturated with the ideas, values, concepts, and freedoms of this grand experiment of a country, we think we know what constitutes our society and freedoms. But that's just the trouble-- when we think we know what is right, what happens when a dilemma comes from within? If we must adapt our values, how do we adjust afterwards?
These are the questions that David Liss addresses in his finest novel yet, The Whiskey Rebels. Deeply American in conception and execution, we see in its pages a wrenching question of patriotism versus justice: if the country that nurtured you is unjust, is it our duty to rebel and right the wrongs? Or does that simply fall under the category of revenge? In a gritty story woven with masterfully tangled threads, Liss explores the conflict and is brave enough not to offer an absolute answer.
Split into two intertwining narratives, the book follows the tale of the disgraced Captain Ethan Saunders, an alcohol-sodden ex-spy destitute in Philadelphia, and that of Joan Maycott, a grievously wronged pioneer on the western border of Pennsylvania. We pick up the story in early 1792, an era of tangled politics and tenuous economics, ruled by veterans and strongly opposed idealists like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Saunders, by all appearances a disreputable, philandering ruin of a man, soon becomes caught up in a complicated web of events involving the disappearance of a former love's husband, mysterious strangers, and the fragile Bank of the United States. Someone threatens the Bank, and despite warnings from Hamilton and several agents, he gets deeper and deeper into the threats against it-- and him.
The parallel story is one of tragedy, deception, and failed dreams-- and vaguely reminiscent of the tales of unemployment, foreclosure, and woe from today. Told in the format of a memoir, we meet Joan Maycott when she is just a child and follow her from her family's farm in rural New York through her marriage to Andrew Maycott, their removal to New York City (which Liss evokes in all its glorious 18th century squalor and improvement upheaval), and to the barren, hopeless land west of Pittsburgh. There, she and her husband are beset by difficulty, oppression, and before long it is all that they can take before being inspired to rebellion.
Liss has clearly improved as a writer since his bestsellers A Conspiracy of Paper and The Coffee Trader. Here his characters are deeper, more complex, and passionate, both in writing and in action, without losing that lighthearted charm that the author is so well known for. Ethan Saunders is a marvelous conundrum of a character, a murky mixture of honorable patriotism with nefarious lechery with a sprinkle of alcohol addiction thrown in. He is universally despised for being a scoundrel by his peers, but is simultaneously respected for his skill as a spy and honor for participation in the Revolutionary War.
One of the things that makes The Whiskey Rebels so fascinating is its particular focus on the post-Revolutionary America. Where the end of the 18th century was a period of enlightenment, bettering education, and expanding scientific horizons in Europe, it was a dismal, confusing tangle in the brand-new United States, and no one knew if this enormous experiment was going to succeed or collapse into shards of anarchy. Oftentimes, the two decades following the Revolution are skipped in the study of history, which is surprising-- during those twenty years, our Constitution was written, the economics of our country shook but stood firm, and the Whiskey Rebellion rose and was put down. Many important events that shaped us happened quickly after the Revolution, and Liss has finally opened up those years in this brilliant novel.
Another interesting relationship is that of Saunders with his slave, Leonidas. Most often, the master-slave relationship is exploitative, cruel, and abusive, but there were exceptions-- those more akin to a friendship. Sure enough, they were rare, but there are exceptions to every rule, and Liss has portrayed a fascinating co-dependency between Leonidas, a well-educated Americanized African, and Saunders, a gruff, lonely military fellow who won Leonidas in a game of cards. We spend the whole book guessing at whether he hates Saunders, disrespects him, or grudgingly likes him, and there are plenty of laughs along the way.
But perhaps the most important feature of The Whiskey Rebels is the questions that it raises about patriotism. Most of us regard ourselves as patriots if we support our troops, sing the national anthem, and raise a toast on Independence Day-- but what does it really mean to be a patriot? Is it just loyalty to one's country, or is it also an innate sense of responsibility, of holding one's government in check? And if the people are wronged, is it the patriot's duty to change the government to right those wrongs?
This masterful, thoroughly American work is available on Amazon for $10.20 in paperback, or on the Kindle for $12.00. In this day and age of questions and the changing American social landscape, it's important to understand our past and our duty as a people to our country. Novels may be fiction, but there are important truths buried even in the most fanciful of stories, and there are momentously important ones here.
On that note, happy election season!