'Mockingjay' is a winning finish to 'Hunger Games' trilogy

MOCKINGJAY, by Suzanne Collins. Scholastic, 390 pp., $17.99.

If you have high school students at home, you might find Suzanne Collins' new novel, "Mockingjay," on their recommended-reading list next summer. If you're smarter than a ninth grader, you'll grab it for yourself.

"Mockingjay" is the third and final tome in Collins' sci-fi "Hunger Games" trilogy. While the books have been marketed to young adults, the depth of the dark plot, the pace of the action and the depiction of goodness continually struggling to triumph over human nature have captured the adult audience as well.

Had there been a Long Island bookstore open at midnight when it went on sale Aug. 24, I'd have been in line.

A brief recap of the story so far: The Capitol dictatorship runs the country of Panem, which exists on what used to be North America. Each year it forces its 12 subservient districts to offer one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 16 to participate in the gladiator-style Hunger Games, in which contestants must kill each other off until only one survives. The games are televised nationally for the entertainment of Capitol residents and a reminder to the districts of the government's absolute power.

In Book 1, "The Hunger Games," 16-year-old Katniss and Peeta Mellark, the boy contestant from her district, thwart the Capitol by both surviving. In Book 2, "Catching Fire," the Capitol tosses them back into the arena, striving to squash the rebellion the two have ignited.

"It isn't enough, what I've done in the past, defying the Capitol in the Games, providing a rallying point," Katniss realizes in "Mockingjay," so named because the bird has become the symbol of the rebellion. "I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution." On top of that, Katniss feels she must save Peeta, to whom she feels intense loyalty; he has been captured by the Capitol. Whether Katniss is in love with him or with her best friend, Gale Hawthorne, is a romantic subplot of the series.

"Mockingjay" starts out slowly, as Collins introduces the new world of District 13, where Katniss awakens after the conclusion of "Catching Fire." District 13, to Katniss' surprise, is a new entity - a mythical, rebellious district that had previously only been rumored (and hoped) to exist. Here, residents are called "Soldier," everyone wears identical gray pants and shirts, and meals are doled out according to nutritional needs, with serving size calculated on age, height, body type, health and amount of physical labor in each person's mandated daily schedule.

Gale has a much bigger role in "Mockingjay," by Katniss' side, while Peeta is now a captive paraded on Capitol television. Peeta implores: "Don't be a fool, Katniss. Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you're working with? Do you really know what's going on? And if you don't, find out."

Even the reader isn't sure whom to trust: devoted Gale raises suspicions that he's a double agent; trusted Peeta at times seems to be working for the other side. "Mockingjay" is filled with twists, welcome in a wrap-up where readers might expect a predictable resolution. This installment has more mass carnage than the previous books, as Panem erupts in civil war. But rather than the capricious murders of characters in the first two books, the majority of the deaths in "Mockingjay" are in the service of a greater cause: the quest for freedom.

Unsurprisingly, there's no Disney ending to this trilogy that has already been likened to disturbing classics such as "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. And "Mockingjay" - well, it calls to mind "Animal Farm," in which George Orwell condemns all those who try to control others through political power and influence.