Mockingjay

I'm in mixed minds here: this is a well-written, heart-rending young adult series (ie: no sex, much violence, much heartache) whose scientific / technological base is so sketchy as to be non-existent.

Consider: we have a flawed hero (loner, given to mistaken assumptions she grimly pursues past time for changing her mind) who gets involved in a series of misfortunes almost totally without an option, who inspires others to follow her supposed example - even unto death, it seems. So far, good.

THEN you get a society that seems to be based around a set of towns / villages with next to no technology other than steam power and brute muscle, that feeds a cruel and capricious ruling class who seem to have some of the more amazing tech ever put into such a book: invisible "hovercraft", forcefields, nanotech-enabled medicine, nukes, genetech to die for (literally, in the case of the "mutts"), weather and possibly even gravity control.

Really?? I realise it's a bit hard to sketch out a whole society when you have to imaginatively have to kill a bunch of kids in arenas not once, but several times, but a map might have been nice. And maybe a little more detail on how big / complex the districts were.

As it was, I give it a 3 out of 5 simply because the characterisation was generally pretty good: Katniss was well-drawn; Peeta less so (though crazy, Peeta was good); President Snow was 2-D at first but developed depth... but the rest of them? Straw men/women, fuel to the fire.

So it goes!