At some point, they realized that they had been tricked. And President Snow can’t tolerate being made to look like a fool.

Yes he can.

Snow has done nothing but shoot himself in the foot since he showed up.  Someone who continually screws himself like Snow has only two options: learn to do better or put up with it.  And he clearly didn’t pick the first option.  (Or, door number three, he doesn’t stay in power and implodes instead, but that didn’t happen either.)

It doesn’t matter whether they tracked us to the second apartment or assumed we went directly underground.

Yes it does.

If they know you’re here because they tracked you here, then this is probably the only threat you have to deal with.  If they just started sending mutts all over the place willy-nilly in the hopes of finding you somewhere, then getting out of the sewer isn’t going to help you much.  And if they went directly for the sewers because they’re fucking psychic or whatever your excuse for that is, then that matters a lot.

You know what I hear when I read this line?  The author, going “Shhhhhh, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not, shhhhhhh, just go with it, shhhhhh.”

“Katniss.” Peeta’s lips are barely moving, but there’s no doubt, the name came out of him. Just when I thought he seemed a little better, when I thought he might be inching his way back to me, here is proof of how deep Snow’s poison went. “Katniss.” Peeta’s programmed to respond to the hissing chorus, to join in the hunt.

FFS, he’s asleep, maybe the weird hissing noise is just being incorporated into his dream.  One time I shared a hotel room with a guy who snored like a buzz saw and I dreamed about him snoring.  In my dream I killed him and his corpse kept snoring and it was a nightmare because I couldn’t make it stop and I eventually woke up and kicked him out, but still.  Sleeping people can respond to external stimuli.

Now, if the book were handled better, I would give her this one.  It’s a tense situation, she’s on edge, he’s already shown a proclivity for attacking her at inopportune moments.  It’s a good point for her to be on edge and jumping to conclusions.  But 1) she’s always like this and 2) we just had an entire chapter opening that was Katniss explaining to us how mutts got in the sewer.  Again and again in these books, Katniss makes “guesses” about things that are outside of her line of sight, she describes events and explains motivations that she can’t possibly know…and every single time she’s proven right.  It’s a kind of narrative cheating that lets the author get around the fact that this is in first person.  Instead of committing to the limitations of a first person narrator, the book will pull passages like this out and then pass them off as “guesses,” when in reality they’re just disguised third person bits.  And thanks to that cheating, Katniss’s position within the story gets shot to hell.  Is she an unreliable narrator?  No, she’s as accurate as the author-god.  Except when she isn’t.  And how can you tell the difference?  You can’t, because this book sucks.  It cheated, and by doing that it shot itself in the foot.

I look at the crew, armed with nothing but cameras and clipboards.

Why the fuck are these guys still here?  \~/

Since Gale and I have our bows, we hand our guns over to Messalla and Cressida.

You know what bows are great for?  Basically everything except enclosed spaces.  Like sewers. \~/

There’s no time to show them anything but how to point and pull the trigger,

Sounds like someone’s getting a case of friendly fire soon!

Seriously, if you have to give up your own weapons and give them to unskilled, untrained cameramen, then stop dragging those people around, they’re a liability. \~/

I’m guessing that’s how the hissing things are tracking us, because we haven’t left much of a physical trail. The mutts’ noses will be abnormally keen

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.

although they’re certain to be much faster than we are.

THE CHEATING IN THIS CHAPTER IS DRIVING ME CRAZY.

It’s been bad all through the series, but it’s not usually this blatant.

“They’ll probably kill anyone. It’s just that they won’t stop until they get to her,” says Gale. After his hours studying with Beetee, he is most likely right.

…because….Beetee made the mutts?  Dafuq am I even looking at?

I’m looking at a desperate attempt to cover up CHEATING which just created a plot hole instead.

A roadway where delivery vehicles can drive with ease, without the congestion of the Capitol. Empty now, of everything but us.

Because apparently the invading army didn’t think this was useful. \~/

one false step will cause the ground beneath our feet to disintegrate, feeding us into something labeled MEAT GRINDER.

Because when you make a trap for your invading enemies, always make sure that it also has a loophole they can skip around.  Don’t make it impassable or nothing, no, that would make far too much sense. \~/

the wide shaft of golden light that radiates from ceiling to floor. Inside, Messalla is as still as a statue, poised up on the ball of one foot, head tilted back, held captive by the beam. I can’t tell if he’s yelling, although his mouth is stretched wide. We watch, utterly helpless, as the flesh melts off his body like candle wax.

You had so many opportunities to not die, Messalla, but this book wasn’t going to give them to you. |~|

Why is every trap not this?  Why? I’ll believe you if you give me a reason, but just tell me.  Put these on all the streets.  Make sure they overlap so there’s no chance of someone doing an Indiana Jones skip to get around them.  Then turn them all on at once.  BOOM, no more rebel army.  Problem solved.

This is why having a variety of traps makes no sense.  Because when you can do this, you don’t need flesh-eating rats. And if you can’t do this everywhere because…I don’t know, it takes too much energy or something, then why not put your most effective killing devices around the positions that need the most defense?  Why this random spot here in the sewers?

This is all so fucking slapdash and careless and sloppy.  There’s no point to any of this.  It wasn’t created to be an effective defense; it was created for the sake of writing cool traps.  Nothing else.  That’s the book’s only concern right now, because if the capitol defenses were set up to defend the capitol then it sure as fuck wouldn’t look like this. \~/

I don’t know why he’s in control, when he should be flipping out and bashing my brains in, but that could happen any second.

Did you forget what book you’re in?  There is no logic here, just whatever slapdash random bullshit fits the narrative.

[The mutts] swarm over the Peacekeepers, living and dead, clamp on to their necks with their mouths and rip off the helmeted heads.

So, speaking of these things…why do they exist?  Logistically speaking, where did they come from?  Did Snow just have them on order and sitting in vats, waiting to be used?  How long does it take to make a mutt?  Did someone take time out of the war effort to design and manufacture these things?  If so, why?  And why make them mindless killing machines?  Were they kind of shitty mutts because they were made too quickly, maybe?

That’s an awful lot of time and effort put into something that’s only going to kill your own people, when you could have done exactly the same thing with bloodhounds.  Does this world just not have dogs?

I don’t know why I bother asking anymore.  This book has pretty much fallen apart, and it’s clear that things are happening out of the blue just for the sake of making a tense moment and nothing else.  We’re into LOST-style writing, guys, and even the fans know it.  I just can’t help asking…

A yard below, a poisonous brew of human waste, garbage, and chemical runoff bubbles by us. Parts of the surface are on fire, others emit evil-looking clouds of vapor.

…

…

… …

I think we found the source of the series of unspecified natural disasters.  No one in this world knows anything about waste management.

Seriously, talk about your video game scenario, because this is straight-up Supervillain Science right here.

“Wait! Where are Jackson and Leeg One?”

“They stayed at the Grinder to hold the mutts back,” says Homes.

|~| |~|

Lashing out with tails and claws, taking huge chunks of one another or their own bodies with wide, lathered mouths, driven mad by their need to destroy me.

Oh, well, nothing to worry about, then.  I mean, fuck, when you make a creature that maims itself before reaching target, that’s not exactly threatening.

No mutt is good. All are meant to damage you.

…but that’s only because you guys are stupid.  There’s nothing inherently homicidal about genetic engineering, it’s just that your society decided to use it for stupid shit instead of…I don’t know, dolphins that do your fishing for you.

As one yanks back his head to take the death bite, something bizarre happens. It’s as if I’m Finnick, watching images of my life flash by. The mast of a boat, a silver parachute, Mags laughing, a pink sky, Beetee’s trident, Annie in her wedding dress, waves breaking over rocks. Then it’s over.

And that was…

…

…

…

Magic?

Also, bye Finnick. |~|

And Homes.  Too bad you didn’t get a magic flash of your life.  |~|

Was there anyone else down there?

I’m rising to my feet when a woman throws open the door. She wears a bright turquoise silk robe embroidered with exotic birds. Her magenta hair’s fluffed up like a cloud and decorated with gilded butterflies. Grease from the half-eaten sausage she’s holding smears her lipstick. The expression on her face says she recognizes me. She opens her mouth to call for help.

Wow.  Just…wow, book.  |~|

Look at that.  This nameless woman, who dies after Katniss shoots her “without hesitation,” is introduced to us not with the threat of recognition, not with the fact that she’s going to alert someone, no.  We’re introduced to her with her clothes, her hair, and the fact that she’s got on yucky makeup that isn’t done right. 

This woman is about to die and the first thing the book wants us to know about her is her tacky clothes.  This woman is about  to die and the second thing the book wants us to know about is her hair.  We find out she’s eating sausage before we learn that she’s any sort of a threat.  Because the book has a limited number of words to justify this woman’s death, and that’s what it’s going to use.  Sausage.

This book is feminist, and don’t you forget it!

This book has a lot of death in it.  (If you can’t tell from your level of intoxication, sorry about that.)  And it reminds me of something from my own deployment.

I had a great group of people with me when I was in Iraq.  Just a really, incredibly awesome group that would (and did) trust with my life.  We were so good at running our missions that we could (and did) go from dead asleep to geared up, formed up, briefed, checked, and out the gate in 15 minutes, tops.  We chased bad guys.  We could roll up on a target and from the time we arrived at the house, it would take five minutes to get out of our trucks, kick in the door, and get everyone outside, cuffed, and in control.  Wham, bam, thank-you-ma’am.  No one saw us coming. Half an hour later, we’d have all the searches and collecting done and we’d be loaded up on our way home again.  I could go from asleep in my bunk to asleep-again in my bunk in two hours.  And (most of the time) no one died.  Because we were that badass.  We were so badass that we didn’t kill anyone when we raided a house.

Now, there was this…other group on our base.  They were OGA (Other Government Agency).  They had basically the same job we did, just they were self-contained with their own targets, toys, and intelligence.  About halfway through my deployment, we started to get invited along on their missions.  Basically, we were the backup system for these guys.  They didn’t exactly play well with others, because they never let us do anything and they never shared information.  “Where are we going?”  “Um…”  “Who are we after?”  “Er…”  “Can you tell us anything about this?”  “Could, but we’re not going to.”  With these OGA guys, we’d roll up on a house…and sit there.  And sit there.  And sit there.  We’d wait in our trucks while these guys spend a good 20 minutes getting ready.  It was ridiculous.  They’d have guys up on roofs and point lasers everywhere and chatter on their radios about positions.  When they went into a house, it always turned into a fight.  Always.  (What did you expect when you spend 20 suspicious-as-fuck minutes scuttling around the house?)  These guys were so concerned with playing with their little toys and using all their little gadgets and being sneaky that they wouldn’t be able to find their own ass if you put a hand on it for them.  We used to “joke” that they kept dead bodies in the trunk so that if they didn’t kill someone in the raid, they could still toss a body out to look cool.

This chapter?  This chapter is basically those OGA guys.  This chapter is treated dead bodies the same way they did.  Like it’s a fucking checklist, like it means something other than just ‘people died.’  Like it’s something that counts.  “Yup, that was a really intense mission.  That was a really important mission.  You can tell, because look how many people we killed.”  Fuck that.  Throwing around dead bodies in a story doesn’t mean shit.  It just means that you threw around dead bodies in an attempt to be dark and edgy.  It’s a cheap and easy gesture, and I hate it almost as much as hate those real life guys.  Killing people off does not automatically grant you “dark and edgy” cred, because it’s not even hard to do.  You’ve tossed a dead body in front of me, whoopee, do you want a fucking cookie? 

I’m not saying that you can’t use character death to effect, or even that you can’t use mass-death of bit characters to effect, I’m just saying that the mere presence of dead bodies doesn’t do it for me.  This chapter?  Does not impress me.