A review by fiekesfiction
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

3.5

" The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen."

This final book in the series is not only about how to bring down the oppressive regime, how to make judgements on what costs are justified, or even how to survive the war. But it also is about how to move forward knowing everything that happened. 

Initially, this does not seem like a possibility even to Katniss. 

 "I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself." 

and 

 " the evil thing is inside, not out." 

Everyone in this book is deeply traumatized and in some way damaged and filled with grief. Many of them are completely changed by what they've been through and unable to ever feel safe. And it is not just about this war, it is about what people are capable of and continue to do throughout history and in the future. (And, of course, what is really happening right now.)

 "Now we're in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated. But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction."

So, how do we live with it? How do we go on in a world filled with horrors and people who let those horrors happen?
It's a bitter-sweet mix of a vaguely happy ending. Where things have gotten better, but at horrific costs and with a lot of uncertainty. There is a feeling that people can be horrible and that many characters have discussions about where the line is of what is and is not justifiable in war. What exactly is the border between becoming like the people they are trying to defy. 
But they ultimately do not condemn all of humanity as a horrible irredeemable force of terror. They continue on and create things to hold on to. 
In the epilogue, Katniss and Peeta's kids run around the meadow under which a mass grave of 12 lies   "My children, who don't know they play on a graveyard."  And it is a difficult thing because their distance from the history is what makes it all happy and worth it, but it also comes with the danger of not understanding the hardships that enable them to live this way. So they will have to explain all of it later. 

"I'll tell them how I surive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play."

That's just some very short thoughts on the ending. I have a lot more to say but uhm... I guess I'll write a whole thesis about it. 
On the whole this book was thematically coherent and absolutely heartbreaking, but the weakest in the trilogy in terms of pacing and plot structure.