This is one of the hardest reviews I have ever written. While part of my brain tells me that I should have read this series with 2 weeks of prozac on board, the other half says it was so different and thought provoking that it deserved a clear head and serious contemplation on my part without the fog of pharmaceuticals. I kept hoping for something better in terms of how Katniss ended her story, but retrospectively I am not sure that there was ever any other alternative. The best way I can describe this series is Shirley Jackson's enigmatic,classic short story, The Lottery, meets William Golding's Lord of the Flies. 
 < SPOILER ALERT> 
 Katniss and Gale, along with their families live in District 12, a post apocalyptic mining town in the fictional country of Panam. As part of the annual Hunger Games, an televised event held to remind the people of the districts the cost of rebellion against the Capital, each district selects one boy and one girl to battle to the death along with the chosen representatives from each district. Katniss volunteers to keep her younger sister from being sent into the field of competitors where she has no doubt she will be killed. The baker's son and Katniss's classmate, Peeta, is also selected. Her best friend, Gale, vows to protect her family knowing that the odds of Katniss returning are slim. Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch, a drunken survivor of the Hunger Games and their designated advisor devise a plan where they pretend to be a pair of star crossed lovers and endear the viewing population to them thus improving their chances of survival. Both survive and Katniss unwittingly becomes the symbol of a revolution. This role also casts her as the mark for everything the Capital stands against and lands Katniss and Peeta once again in another Hunger Games. Katniss and fellow competitor, Finnick are rescued by rebels while Peeta is taken hostage and used in a propaganda tool against Katniss and the revolution. Peeta is mind-raped and mostly insane when the rebels finally rescue him. 
 Eventuallly the Capitol falls, her district is destroyed, she ends up with Peeta, and in perhaps the ultimate betrayal her childhood friend and confidant, Gale, is directly or perhaps indirectly responsible for the death of her beloved sister, Prim. Her hope and faith in a better world for the children she refuses to contemplate bringing into her current world, shatters. 
 Or does it? 
 In the end she does have children, but the innocence and vulnerability that so endears her to the reader is irrevocably lost along with the fall of the Capitol and District 12 and the loss of Finnick, Cinna, Rue, Boggs and others. 
 This is not my preferred genre, but I made an exception for this series and was rewarded with doldrums. If you can overcome the first person present tense and the bit of bile that collects in your posterior pharynx from reading a YA series, then by all means read the series. But don't say you weren't warned!!!!