Matt's Homepage

Ah, now on to Ian Flemming’s Bond book 4 – Diamonds are Forever.

This book is only about 50/50 the same as the movie.  Bond is trying to track down a diamond smuggling ring this time.  He starts by slipping into the Spang mob’s supply chain by kidnapping and replacing one of their diamond couriers.  He meets the lovely Tiffany Case who is his mob ‘boss’ and they smuggle some of the stolen African diamonds into the US.  Bond tries to track through the hierarchy of the mob and get his hands on the mysterious Spang Brothers.  In the process, he goes to some horse racing, journeys to Vegas where he mixes it up with the Spang mob, and then has one final adventure on his trip back to England on the Queen Elizabeth.

While the adventure is grand in concept, this book falls far short of most of Fleming’s other novels.  It’s a bit schizophrenic in it’s plot lines with a few too many villains.  Also, the job itself of tracking down the diamonds is more like police work instead of the high government intrigue  we’re used too.  His smuggling of the diamonds with Tiffany case is a good bit of writing, but it falls apart again when he goes for some horse racing in which the delightfully evil, well-done, but far underutilized mob couple Kidd and Wint dump hot mud on the jockey that Bond bribed to toss a horse race in order to tease out the mob.

Bond adventures to Vegas, and decides to stir up the mob by ‘stealing’ money from the mob casino which is set up to pay our Bond’s smuggling pay via a rigged card game that Tiffany deals for him.  This starts the mob after him and eventually gets him captured.  He’s dragged out to the Spang estate – which is a somewhat ridiculous western-era town recreation.  Here we see Bond run completely out of ideas, and take a clean beating from Kidd and Wint.  It’s only by the action of Tiffany that he’s saved, and a train race ensues.  This whole plot line is weak and a bit schizophrenic.  Knowing what we do of mobsters, we’re wondering why they don’t just off bond with a few bullets and be done with it?  Why do these gangsters treat Bond with any respect or concern?  The height of hubris is when Bond, finally captured after killing at least half a dozen of Spang’s men, asks the Spang brother to make him a drink before he talks – and he DOES it.  In every story of mobsters I know they would have beaten him senseless and chopped off a finger for even opening his mouth.  To me, if feels very much like a very British Flemming trying to write about American gangsters from just what little scraps of info would have drifted back across the ocean of his time.  He doesn’t seem to really get mob behavior, and still tinges it with a bit of British culture.

Alas, Flemming pretty much flubs the whole track of the Spang brothers.  They make some amazing blunders for supposedly being so careful – and it just didn’t feel like Flemming knew what he was going to do with these characters.  It’s almost like he set it in motion, realized he was running out of space, and just ends the thread.  Badly.  It’s no surprise they never make it to any of the movie editions.  There’s so little of them present, and what there is is so schizophrenic, that there’s little to even grab hold of.  Probably the worst Bond villains in the books I’ve read to date.

The love interest with Tiffany is as equally disappointing.  She’s certainly an interesting character, but for being such a tough character, she just sorts of falls in love with Bond for little to no reason.  The final adventure they have on the cruise back to England also feels rushed and somewhat hollow and unbelievable.

So, Diamonds are Forever is a so-so book.  One could easily skip it and not miss anything; but for the true Bond fan, there’s plenty of good stuff in here to enjoy.  Give it a C+

 

I continue to make my way through Ian Fleming’s Bond novels – and this time it’s the mysterious Dr. No.

Set after ‘From Russia with Love’, Bond has recovered from the deadly poison attack and is put on a ‘routine’ checkup of a reporting station that went silent in Jamaica.  In what is supposed to be an easy R&R assignment, he discovers the evil Dr. No has people infiltrated large sectors of the locals and is likely behind the disappearances of the reporting station.  He is also apparently up to something on, and behind other mysterious disappearances at, his private Crab Key island.  Bond pairs up with the local Jamaican Quarrel and investigates.  We meet the beautiful and wild Honey Rider who’s grown up by her wits in the tropics gathering shells.  He is captured and after given luxurious treatment and dinner with Dr. No; he is subject to physical abuse as he is beaten, burned, and attacked by sea creatures on Dr. No’s torture course.   And of course we also meet the mysterious and evil Dr. No who wastes no time extolling his own prowess and intellect in true evil genius style.  Can Bond escape the torture course, rescue the girl, and destroy Dr. No?

Dr. No is another case in which the movie actually follows the book pretty closely – and in some ways – surpasses the book.  The characters are the same, but there are a few differences.  The pipe that the movie Bond crawls through in the movie is actually a torture course in the book.  Dr. No doesn’t have any nuclear reactor in the book, and his hands are simply claws, not the mechanical apparatus of the movie.  The death of Dr. No in the nuclear reactor of the movie was almost more cool than the ‘ironic’ death he gets in the book buried under a pile of guano. Dr. No’s reasons for keeping people off the island are due to his use of slave labor in the book, and his missile interception is secondary to profits from the island’s guano mining.

Technically, the writing shows it’s ‘pulpy-ness’ for sure.  Like usual Fleming novels, you’re not going to find any Pulitzer depth or anything resembling literary prose; but you will find a tight little book that keeps the action moving. His dated concepts of ‘good breeding’ and disdain of the Chinese and those of African-American descent are typically prejudiced and bigoted.  Bond’s in-servitude and only passing concern about the death of poor Quarrel leaves a particularly bad taste in your mouth.  Quarrel helps him, protects him, is more fit, stronger, of better character, and would follow Bond anywhere.  Yet barely half the love Quarrel should have got was given.  As in other Bond novels, we see the book Bond’s flaws much more clearly – he’s got far more imperfections than ever show in the suave movie Bond.

Yet there are some great parts.  In true stereotypical fashion, Bond is captured and taken to a beautiful dinner where Dr. No spills his life story because he believes only Bond is ‘smart enough’ to understand his achievements.  There is a great window into the ocean that is a technical marvel Dr. No built to show off his genius. But one of my favorite parts is the introduction of another spy-era villain fax-paux. When Bond is put through the torture maze and Honey is tied up outside to be devoured by crabs, nobody actually watches them or checks to make sure the job is done.  They just wander off at the critical moments and leave them to their oh-so-obvious escape.  Reminds me of the quote, “Now I’ll leave you alone to your almost certain doom by this complex apparatus with that innocuous looking pen and one inept guard.”

So, overall, we have the classic maniac and Bond must destroy him. A great little book, but you won’t get much more out of this than just seeing the movie.  It gets a B because it’s good, but you can get all of that and more out of the 2 hour movie.

Yet another round of classic James Bond.  This time, it’s the dastardly Auric Goldfinger.

Goldfinger is Fleming’s 7th Bond book – and largely doesn’t disappoint.   Unlike most of the rest of the Bond series, the movie version actually follows the book.  Not only that, but the movie actually seemed better.  But that’s no reason not to read this one.

Some of the differences?  In the film, Bond is threatened by a laser beam; in the book, it’s a metal cutting circular saw. In the film, Bond escapes the the laser with clever talking, in the book he is beaten and attempts to hold his breath to reach unconsciousness, completely resigned to death.  In the film, Goldfinger puts Fort Knox to sleep with poison gas; in the book, he taints the town’s water supply. In the film, Goldfinger wants to blow up the fort; in the book, he actually wants to rob it. In the film, both Oddjob and Goldfinger die clever and inventive deaths; in the book, only Oddjob’s demise is interesting.  In the film, the golf game is smoothly played, while in the book it’s a bit rough and Goldfinger even intuits the deception.

The plot in the book also has a few more holes that were handled better in the movie.  For example, in the book the ludicrously shrewd and calculating Goldfinger, (who is a brilliant financier for SMERSH and genius of planning), falls for Bond’s flimsy cover story of working for an export company.  Yet, after Bond completely outwits and flim-flamms Goldfinger publicly, TWICE, Goldfinger somehow figures it’s a good idea to put Bond in charge of part of his Fort Knox operation.  At the last minute.  After he’s said he’s planned this out to the minute with nothing to chance. When Bond is captured and tied to the laser/cutting saw table, he resigns himself to a gruesome death.  No witty banter, no fast-talking escape – just a plan to die quickly and Goldfinger saves him on a hunch on suspicion that Bond might be ‘clever’.

As a final sore spot, the book has the usual cringe-worthy racism and sexism. While ever-present in all of Fleming’s novels, this one seems worse than the others.  Fleming’s racist comments about Oddjob and the other Korean helpers are downright disgusting.  The handling of Pussy Galore’s lesbianism is no less stereotyped.  I’m also amazed at the number of times Bond demands and insults his captors into first-class treatment – and gets it each time!  It definitely showed the cock-sure British ideal of considering themselves to be superior to others and that the place of lessers was to treat their greaters properly – even when they’re about to put you to death.  Definitely out of step with the sensibilities of today – but a good historical reminder of what our world once was.

Still the plot is super-grandiose.  I mean, nowhere else would someone even think of knocking over Fort Knox.  The movie even makes a jab at Fleming with the movie Bond gafawing the the notion of trying to get all the gold out with even a hundred men.  Something Fleming was actually going to do in the book. Yet, Goldfinger falls into the classic villain stereotype of saving Bond because he believes Bond is the only man truly smart enough to appreciate his dastardly plan.  He gives Bond a front-row seat during the critical moments, and then is completely taken aback when Bond foils his plot with a plain-looking shoe.  Sigh.

Sure, it’s a pulp novel with cardboard cut-out villains, heroes, and femme fetals.  But the writing is actually pretty good and  story keeps chugging along nicely.  Ignore the rough spots – and it sure makes me wish we had such grandiose and imaginative villains in the works of today.  All we seem to get in today’s villians are disenfranchised psychopaths (the Joker) racing to the sewers of depravity, super-heroes on 30-year-old rehashed plots, characters that are just thinly veiled social or political commentaries, or gore-fests that show off our latest CGI abilities.  I wonder what a villain of global scale would look like today…

The latest of my Ian Flemming reading is “From Russia With Love”. It was his 5th Bond book and considered one of his best.  I don’t know if I totally agree, but it’s still a very good read.

The plot is full of great early cold-war era intrigue. Russia’s intelligence agency has recently suffered some embarrassing failures and setbacks.  They decide to enlist their lethal SMERSH to come up with a plan to embarrass the west and also eliminate an enemy agent at the same time.  They target Bond for the elimination; and cook up a plot to do so in the most publicly embarrassing way possible by framing him.  SMERSH enlists the irresistible Tatiana Romanova to lure 007 to Istanbul promising to give the west a top-secret Spektor cipher machine.  But when Bond walks willingly into the trap, a game of cross and double-cross ensues.

Overall, the story is not bad and right in line with Flemming’s other novels.  The plot in this book is probably the most complex.  There are many different story lines all working their way towards a resolution and the exact details of the plot are hidden from view until the very end.  Some of those lines are working so completely unseen to the reader that it gives a great bit of excitement as you wonder where and how those spinning wheels will come crashing into view again.

Oh sure, there is plenty of bigotry and nationalism as usual in the Bond series.  Flemming gives great little unfiltered opinions of various Western countries of his day via the comments of the Russian’s during the plotting phase.  He doesn’t seem to think much of the French for sure.  There’s the usual dose of sex and even some lesbianism which would certainly have been as racy as it came back in the day.  There are gypsies that he considers near sub-human, and so forth.  Certainly cringe-worthy for people sensitive to political incorrectness – but I still always find these books amazing insights into exactly what people of 70 years ago used to honestly think.

One notable point in this novel is that Bond walks pretty much right into the Russian trap when there are buckets of warning signs.  The concept of Bond being some invincibly omnipotent agent as we see in the movie versions is not present in most of the actual books.  Yet this book really shows the flaws.  Several times Bond even says to himself that this might be a trap and unsuccessfully tries to sort out the plots that appear to be SCREAMING that it’s a trap (you dolt!).  Yet he goes right along with it anyway and seems to think the power of his masculine intuition over this Russian agent he is making love with is all-powerful.  Oh how wrong he turns out to be.

There are some great villains.  The head of SMERSH is vile and cringe worthy.  The assassin himself is a great character; and painted as dark as one could imagine.  The depths of his murderous and homicidal tenancies are nearly unparalleled in other works I’ve read of this era.  He’s a genuinely nasty and downright psychopathic killer.  Still, I found myself laughing out loud though when it came to the point of the kill.  He actually wakes up his completely vulnerable victim to tell them the WHOLE plot ad-nausium before making what should have been an easy kill.  It introduces the classic faux-pax of having your enemy completely in your power, stopping to spill the whole plot, and then flub it because you gave the victim a window of opportunity.  Truly classic.

Overall, it is a good book.  I think I might still give the nod to Moonraker, but this one has much more intrigue and dynamism to it. I give it a A- for the adventure, with the minus points for Bond’s walking right into a trap WE all saw coming.

Short story collection

This new collection of nine short stories written by Ian Fleming is actually a collection of two separate short story books: For Your Eyes Only, and Octopussy And The Living Daylights.

I won’t go over every story since there are 9, but there are some real gems in this collection of great stories.  Some of my favorites are:

• For Your Eyes Only – some friends of M’s in Jamaica are killed when they refuse to sell their land to a nefarious man.  Bond tracks the man and when he’s arriving at their remote mountain hideout – he encounters the daughter (Judy) of the slain friends on her way to kill Hammerstein herself with a bow.  The action of the shootout is great and Judy is a well-done character.
• Quantum of Solice – This really unique story told to Bond over a dinner conversation about a young, beautiful air hostess is one of my favorites.  She falls in love with a pedestrian public servant and marries him in Bermuda.  Their poor pairing (she likes the social life, he is very un-social) soon leads to her having a open affair with a popular and rich young man on the island. After the husband has a breakdown and is sent away for a while, he returns and emotionally divorces her while still maintaining a relationship publicly.  He heaps cold injuries on her and finally divorces her after his assignment ends – leaving her with a mountain of debt.  The ending takes an awesome twist and is a great study of human character and the power of un-healed emotional hurts.
• Octopussy – Another unique story told mostly in flashback.   It tells the story of a retired English agent who worked intelligence during WW2.  After the war, he kills a German who knows of secret hidden gold.  He convinces the German officer to show him the hiding place, kills the man, steals the gold, and then retires to a tropical paradise to live ‘happily ever after’.  Bond tracks him down and when Bond lets him have a few hours to think out how he should turn himself in, the man goes for one last swim…
• Property of a lady – not terribly unique, but does tell the story of good double-agent espionage.  A woman is sent a fabulous Faberge egg in payment for her spy services over the years.  The English secret service have known of her double-agency and have been using her to feed false information back to Russia for some time.  They don’t want to lose her as a great feed of false information to the Russians, but Bond deduces that the Russians will send her handler to the auction to drive up the minimum price enough to cover her services, and they’ll likely discover who this man is.  Bond arrives at the auction, and the adventure begins…

All the stories are good for sure.  Again, not rocket science and not to be delved too deeply in – but great little action short stories.  Again, another great collection of Bond tales and worth the read.  I rate them a solid A-.  Highly recommend.

Next up on my James Bond audio-book while you drive to work kick: Moonraker

This is Ian Fleming’s 3rd bond book – and considered by many to be one of his best.  It really introduces a number of the re-current character traits and story lines of a Bond novel – and it is a good little story to boot.  In the movie version, we saw Hugo Drax bent on destroying the world via taking a chosen population to space and then gassing the entire world’s population as a bid to ‘restart’ the world.  The book version, as usual with Flemming novels, differs from the movie. But as Bond adaptations go – it’s pretty darn close.

In our story, Hugo Drax is a rich and results-oriented industrialist in charge of an important government contract: the Moonraker project.  Moonraker is a new missile designed to protect Britain by making it capable of dropping warheads on enemy targets around it’s sector of the globe.  The post-WW2/pre-cold war themes are thick in this story line and a great insight into the fears of Fleming’s times.  However, Drax and his scientists on the project are a very mysterious lot with very shadowy backgrounds; but are in charge as they are the only people capable of developing such a technological marvel.

The story starts with us introduced to Bond’s gambling prowess at the high-society, high-stakes gambling club Blades at which M is a member.  Drax has been trouncing people at cards and has raised M’s suspicions of cheating.  Bond is sent in to uncover the methods behind Drax’s winning streak and then brutally turns the tables on him.  Fleming’s description of Drax’s character flaws with its near phrenological, and psychological and character ‘analysis’ is down-right entertaining.  You can hear how a person’s fiber was judged in post-war England – which is thick with derogatory national, racial, and appearance-based evaluations.

After the trouncing by Bond, there is the mysterious death of the Moonraker project’s government overseer just days before the very public test launch meant to show the world Britain’s new might.  Bond is brought in to investigate and make sure nothing interferes with a successful, test-firing of the Moonraker rocket.  He then uncovers the sinister background of the scientists and Drax, as well as their diabolical plan.  As the seconds before the Moonraker is test shot, Bond must find a way to stop their plot and save England.

The plot is solid and simple, the villain overblown, the evil plot gigantic, and the story keeps right on going through the minor plot holes and improbabilities.  Drax makes the first of the now-boilerplate great evil-genius monologs.  In short, it’s everything James Bond story is meant to be and I was loving it.

I give this a solid A- since it’s a great, fast and entertaining read.  It introduces us to many of Bond’s character traits and the action he’s well known for.  Highly recommend.

Next up on my listen-while-you-commute: Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming

Live and Let Die is Ian Fleming’s second novel, which came out pretty quickly after Casino Royal.  This story has a very different tone with Bond traveling to America to battle the nefarious black gangster Mr. Big.

The story starts with someone smuggling and selling large quantities of gold coins in Harlem.  The coins are from old Caribbean pirate treasure long thought lost.  M sends Bond to America where he hooks up CIA agent Felix Leiter to find out who is selling the coins.  Their path soon crosses the gigantic Haitian Mr Big who is behind the coins.  He works for SMERSH and uses voodoo to maintain his control over his minions.  During Bond’s first encounter, he meets Mr Big’s captive fortune-telling girlfriend Solitaire.  He escapes, saves Solitaire, and they head to Florida to follow up on a lead to the source of the smuggling route.  The story then gets thick with Felix being attacked by sharks and Bond heading to Jamaica to search out the source and get revenge for Felix as well as rescue the now-captive Solitaire.  Bond swims through shark infested waters to the island source, is captured, and is nearly killed as Mr Big attempts to drag Solitaire and Bond across the reefs.

It’s a great little story, but certainly different than Fleming’s earlier offerings.  Fleming’s impressions of America via Bond’s observations are humorous and derogatory at times.  His comments about American cars, food, and Florida’s aging retirement population are particularly entertaining/harsh.  It is a good insight into how certain American cultural aspects appear to our foreign friends.  There is plenty of racism in Flemming’s writing about Mr. Big’s and his African American gangsters.  Fleming’s 50’s-era sentiments certainly show.

Despite the sexism/racism/dated descriptions (that likely wouldn’t have been given a second thought in Fleming’s day) it’s a pretty entertaining story.  It contains a caricature-like portrait of America but plenty of action and suspense.  Bond’s seduction of Solitaire is also a strong storyline. This book also introduces a recurrent Bond theme of tropical destinations and shark-infested underwater adventures.  The final scene of Bond being tied behind Mr. Big’s boat and dragged through shark infested waters was used almost exactly in the movie version.

In the end, it was a pretty decent story.  Nothing spectacular, but is much like a fun carnival ride.  Lots of sound and action, but not a ton of substance.  I give it a B.  Recommend.

Shesh!  Book reviews galore.  Looks like I’ve been having too many boring drives home.  Anyway, on to a new book: one of Ian Flemming’s  James Bond stories.

This one is “The Spy Who Loved Me”.  It was another short read at 6 discs, or about 5 days of commuting.  If you’ve never had the honor, you should really read one of Ian Flemming’s Bond books.  The first thing you’ll note is that the movies have just about nothing to do with the stories they are named after.  Sure, there is a character named James Bond who is a spy; a damsel in distress, some evil characters, but that’s where things depart.

In this case, we have the story of a young French Canadian who is working her way across country doing odd jobs as she goes to pay the way.  As our story starts, she is working at a vacation motel at the end of it’s season.  On the last night, some unsavory gentlemen appear as does James Bond (by pure chance).  Bond’s debonair manner and gunplay ensue as he and our night clerk try to figure out and foil our villains’ evil plot without getting killed.  Being a short book, all the adventure really takes place at this one motel  There’s no evil mastermind plotting to destroy the world or counterespionage intrigue.  Just a great little compact story of an adventuresome night spent at a motel.

And for that, it’s a great little story.  Sure, it’s a bit dated with the girls being called dolls and whatnot, but it’s still a pretty good story overall.  Unlike a number of other Bond books, this one doesn’t have as much blatant bigotry you’ll find in some of Fleming’s other novels.  Instead, you get a good little story with some tight action sequences and a good finish.  I enjoyed it.

While nothing earth-shattering will happen here, but it’s still an enjoyable little pulpy adventure. I give it a B.

It appears yet another book is being made into a movie.  This time it’s the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  I just finished book 1 of this 6 part series – A Princess of Mars.

First off, some interesting tidbits about Edgar Rice Burroughs.   Burroughs had a very difficult early go in life despite his promising start.  He was born to a prosperous family in 1875. He served in the 7th Calvary in WW I but never saw action due to a heart problem.  After his discharge, however, he worked at all sorts of odd and very low-paying jobs such as railroad policeman, office manager, and even pencil sharpener wholesaler.  None of these endeavors were  successful and he and his small family lived in near poverty for many years.  At 35, he wrote the Mars series for All-Stories magazine.  This started his writing career and lead to a great number of works including the most famous, the Tarzan series.

But back to the book.  This was a quick audiobook ‘read’ coming in at only 6 discs, or 6 hours, of listening.  The first thing that will strike you is the tone.  You can tell this was written in turn of the 1900’s language and style.  The men speak more like English gentlemen and the ‘science’ part of the sci-fi is problematic and dated to say the least. Still, he does get a number of things partly right – which is pretty good considering what was known of other planets at the time.

Our hero, John Carter, is transported to Mars via an encounter in a mystical cave.  Once there, he has the strength of 20 men and can leap great distances with little effort due to the low gravity of Mars.  He encounters the warlike green men of Mars and earns a place with them through combat.  During his adventures with the green men, he meets the captured humanoid princess Dejah Thoris.  His attempts to win her hand and save both her and her city Helium from various armies leads to epic battles and adventures.

The battles and fights certainly portray the signs of Burroughs’ times.  There are clear echos of white man vs Indian/’savage tribe’ attitudes, battles that themselves would be considered brutal and morally questionable by today’s standards.  But that does not terribly detract from the story.  In fact, if anything, it add something Burroughs never expected: historical insight.  In many ways, Burroughs’ writing echos the prevailing attitudes towards indigenous peoples and what was considered the height of culture and understanding of his days.  It’s a good reminder to always have a healthy dose of skepticism as to our own perceived ‘we know much better and are so much more sophisticated’ attitudes and political/social agendas.  In some ways, his world is much more civilized such as in the case of the duel-like rules of personal combat.  In others, such as reasons for battle and killing every last man of your enemy, appear barbaric.

Still, with so much story to tell in such a short time – the writing is anything but eloquent.  One person has (mostly correctly) said it reads a lot like an adventure written towards teenage boys.  Sure, you can get some dialog exchanges that are simplistic to a point of being almost comical.  The sci-fi part is clearly dated and wrong in many ways.  This isn’t intellectual reading.  But is it a good story and worth the read?  Yep!

It’s a ride at a carnival.  The set pieces and characters are mostly painted walls, and the dangers only as real as you imagine them to be; but that doesn’t make it any less fun.  It’s an escape from the mundane into the somewhat ridiculous and far-flung.   It’s just good fun when you can see beyond the shortcomings and enjoy it for what it is.  A crazy romp to another planet where a southern gentleman meets and falls in love with the most beautiful woman he’s ever met with a pet monster as a bosom friend while swash-buckling his way through epic battles.

Overall, I give it a solid B and I’m looking forward to the movie version as there should be some great opportunities for crazy creatures and epic battles.

Just finished the third and final book of the Hunger Games trilogy.  In this final installment, Katniss is with the rebels and they are in a war to defeat the Capitol.  The stakes are high as she fights along with the other rebels in a winner-take-all war.  There’s not much I can say beyond that without giving out some serious spoilers.  So here they come.  Skip if you don’t want to know anything.

<Spoilers>
I have a lot of criticism for this book.

First off, people drop like flies.  Previous victors are killed off in rapid-fire succession like red-shirts on a Star Trek episode and very little is given to these losses other than passing sentiment.  Peeta is brutally brainwashed by Snow into wanting to kill Katniss.  This powerful story element was mostly flubbed by Collins and it quickly reverts to the tired love triangle theme that just continues to go nowhere for 90% of even this book.  Finally, the killing of her sister Prim has to be one of the most pointless, even sadistic, story elements from a writer I’ve run across in years.   The very fact Prim was where she was *ahead* of the front lines, and that the whole point of the death was to take Gale out of the love-triangle equation by means of some of the most feeble logic I’ve ever heard made me throw my hands up in frustration at Collins.

As a core theme, the love triangle, just gets completely flubbed with cheap moves.  I’d hoped something good would come of it and see our characters bloom into something rich and heartwarming despite the surrounding destruction.  Mostly I just wanted to smack the three of them and Collins’ poor handling.  Despite each of their flaws, I wanted to hear Peeta or Gale have an epiphany and confess their love for her in some heartfelt and real expression of their inner self.  Katniss could have done likewise or actually *chose* one of them.  But instead of this, Collins merely makes Gale out to be a monster (on trumped up charges none-the-less) and Katniss ends up with Peeta kind of by default even though Peeta sees clearly that Katniss never really loved him.   Even this ‘resolution’ you don’t find out until the tacked-on epilogue.  And the reason she’s with Peeta?  The best answer you get is because she ‘owes’ him more as he did more for her earlier.  Really?  That’s why you marry someone? And that’s what you do with a story element going on for 3 books?

For those that at least enjoyed Haymitch’s presence: this staple, interesting and ever-working in the background character in the first books is barely even present in this one.  Felt he was completely under-utilized.

Turning the Capitol into deathtraps, and having custom-bred dogs that whisper Katniss name felt like overdone and feeble attempts to recapture the interesting Hunger Games theme – but mostly didn’t work and it was too little, too late.

The storytelling itself was disjointed and spotty.  Big gaps of time with hard landings left some of the story hard to follow and further exaserbated the feelings of disconnectedness with the characters.

Finally, Katniss.  She suffers badly from PTSD effects through most of the book, several times getting drugged into oblivion so she can just hang on.  She does take on the role of the Mockingjay – but that role never really goes anywhere and Collins absolutely blows a great opportunity to make that a much more powerful symbol.  Instead, all it turns into is a propaganda piece that Katniss herself isn’t very interested in.   But the big failing in my opinion is that Katniss doesn’t seem to grow as a person.  There are a few attempts to protest morally questionable activities like the bombing of the nut in district 2, but that doesn’t go anywhere. In fact, she shows quite the opposite of character and growth when she votes to throw the children of the Capitol’s leaders into one last Hunger Games (run by the rebels of all things) with no real discussion of the morality given.  It gets like 3 pages – bang – she votes to throw these innocent kids into the arena and nothing more is said.  Then, about 10 pages later, she coolly assassinates Coin without much of a second thought.  Overall, we’re left with a burned-out, war-scarred character that hasn’t shown any particular growth or hope.  I was left caring very little for her when I could have been there with her all along if she’d shown even one tenth the character, struggle, or growth you’d see with Frodo or other person in a titanic struggle like this.  It could maybe have been made a bit better with her at least started to find some sort of healing or hope at the end – but even that we don’t get.  I don’t need a fairytale ending – but there should be some sign of hope, change, or healing.

I don’t know if I would qualify this book as a teen book.  It’s got some pretty rough story lines and themes: PTSD, mental and physical abuse, drugged states to get through personal crises, many morally questionable activities (that don’t get questioned) and plenty of death and destruction. While these topics can be appropriate for teens if consequences and characters struggle to make right choices, but you get little of that. I didn’t find the way they were handled to be very productive or geared towards helping teen readers understand these topics.

There are some good points.  There is an interesting and clever bit about the power struggle between President Coin, President Snow and Katniss, but it just doesn’t make up for the other problems.

</Spoilers>

So, I had a lot more criticism of this book than good things to say and would even hesitate to call it teen-appropriate.  While it was a decent attempt to bring the elements to a close – the writing and story just fell apart in too many ways.  I was hoping for a lot out of this book – but it left me disappointed.  If you saw the story cracks in book 2, then those cracks are absolute canyons in this book.  You should probably read it to finish the trilogy since it’s only 10 audio discs (600 minutes); but don’t go into it expecting a very good story.  You just aren’t left feeling very connected or concerned about Katniss or most of the other characters (that manage to still be alive) by the end.  I was just glad this train-ride was over.  Sadly, the journey started so well in book 1 has turned into a destination to which I never want to go back.  Even as I sit here writing this I am thinking of ways in which this book could have been better.  Sigh.

I give this book a D+ rating.  It finished everything up; but left numerous problems with the morality of their choices, the plot, and the largely unsatisfying ending to the characters.