CATCHING FIRE

Suzanne Collins

MSRP $17.99, 400 Pages.

Published by Scholastic.

The protagonist of "The Hunger Games" returns.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

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Articles from the New York Times

Sunday Review

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Customer Reviews

Best book of the trilogy

Rating

This was by far the best book of the Hunger Games Trilogy. You have at least gotten to know the characters and feel for them, and it is before they completely drain the life out of you with Mockingjay. This was a really good read and an excellent complement to the first book.

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Terrific Sequel - Exciting and Thrilling

Rating

"Catching Fire" is a terrific read, picking up only a short time after Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games victors depart the train in District 12.

"Catching Fire" is more adult than the original in the series. The themes are a little stronger, the imagery a bit more vivid and the emotions run deeper and are more complex. The violence is more intense than "Hunger Games", but not because the language is more descriptive, nor more creative (although "Catching Fire"'s Hunger Games are new and innovative). The story is large in scale. The characters actions have broad impact across all of Panem's districts. Collins sets the stage for a Panem-wide rebellion and, all of a sudden, Katniss' little world of troubles becomes something much more substantive.

We explore Katniss' relationships further...things change between she and Peeta, and while the relationship differs from the first book, the intensity grows. We also explore her changing relationship with Gale. While older teenage girls should be able to relate to Katniss' up, down, and sideways feelings towards the two young men, younger readers will will have a lot to absorb. That being said, I didn't find anything inappropriate for more mature pre-teens and any teenager.

This second book of Collins' trilogy is a real thriller and sets up what should be a terrific conclusion to the series. I couldn't get through the final 150 pages fast enough, and felt throughout that the story was providing a very satisfying continuation from "Hunger Games", and a relatively satisfying conclusion in itself. Granted, I won't have to wait long to read the third and final story in the series since it's already available, but I certainly understand the agonizing anticipation for "Mockingjay".

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As good as the original, and even more emotionally grueling and rewarding.

Rating

It's a few months after Katniss and Peeta jointly won the Hunger Games, they're back in District 12, and the status quo has been restored. Though her mom and Prim are living in the Victor's Village, Katniss stays in their old shack and spends what time she can with Gale, while she and Peeta aren't speaking to each other. But she and Peeta are going to have to pretend to be madly in love very soon (though Peeta's not pretending), because as victors they must travel from district to district doing guest appearances. President Snow personally tells Katniss that her behavior in the past year's arena has made her the symbol of the rebellion rising in the districts and if she doesn't do exactly as he says, he'll execute everyone she loves.

The romance--or possibly, the lack thereof--ramps up in this sequel, where Katniss needs Gale and Peeta, but still won't confess any sort of romantic love for either of them. This isn't surprising, since Katniss has been the sole breadwinner for her family since childhood. She's an adult in every way until it comes to her feelings and emotions, where it's like she's developmentally frozen at age eleven and is utterly confused and disturbed by any sort of romantic longing. Both guys find her confusion about them depressing. This can't-choose conundrum seems natural and appropriate for Katniss and I'm not annoyed with her character, but it's terribly frustrating as a reader--one with such a deep loyalty to Peeta that I didn't even realize there was a Team Gale until a few months back.

I can't truly admire Gale because when he gets his rare pagetime, the main vibes I get from him are anger and resentment, even toward Katniss whom he loves. Is his attitude simply the natural byproduct of growing up in abject poverty and borderline starvation? Perhaps. But just because his actions can be explained, it doesn't mean that I find them honorable. Also, I feel very strongly that that he should have made his intentions toward Katniss known before she was carted off to be slaughtered, and then brought back after surviving a bloodbath. I don't like that he gets upset that she's paired up with Peeta for the cameras, when he himself never said or indicated to her that he had a romantic interest. I don't hate Gale, nor even dislike him, but neither has he done anything to make me support him.

Peeta, on the other hand... if you thought Peeta was reliable and selfless in THG, he gets even more amazing in CF. More of Peeta's charisma is evident, and though we already knew the magic way he has with words, his spirit shows here. He's moved to anger a couple of times, and it's a sight to see because you know he's not a hothead--if Peeta is visibly angry, it's with good reason. In the first book, he was in desperate straits plenty of times, but he was focused on saving Katniss and he never showed bitterness over his fate. Now, he's in an impossibly difficult situation, and when he lays down the law for Haymitch and Katniss as they're working for their future survival, those two strong-willed victors comply with whatever he says. And the lengths Peeta's willing to go to just to keep Katniss alive...he's unbelievable.

Technical notes: 1. I will admit to the first 150 pages being relatively slow, though there's no wasted space or redundancy. Still, if you're expecting whiz-bang action right off, they might feel plodding. 2. CF takes place over a longer period of time than THG, and as a result it has to do this strange little time-collapse trick more times than I can count. It'll say something like: "And then, we did ___ for the next few weeks" or "we spent a month at ___" which I dislike on principle. If a time-collapse is that big, I expect to see it in a novel only once, twice tops, and I expect that it will be done for dramatic effect. The strategy was a necessary evil for CF, and I can't think of another way the problem could have been handled, but I'm not fond of it. 3. The plot coherence is amazing--Collins rocks so much at dramatic setup that her foreshadows have foreshadows! If CF takes the time to reference a memory, skill, activity, character, object, type of food, etc, you can bet that this same thing will reappear and be significant later on, and you also discover that plenty of these connections were set up way back in THG.

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In Which Katniss is Not Sherlock Holmes

Rating

When last we left our heroine Katniss Everdeen, she was faced with a life of misery because she had to pretend to be in love with someone she kind of likes. She had angered the Capitol by not only surviving the Hunger Games, but bringing fake-boyfriend Peeta out alive as well. Such blatant disregard for the rules has not gone unnoticed, and now the twelve Districts are beginning to get ideas of rebellion.

And so President Snow orders Katniss and Peeta to tour the districts and pretend to be in love to defuse the situation. The Capitol seems to be a bit undecided as to what to do with the pair, because Katniss and Peeta are also thrown back into the Hunger Games for round two.

Catching Fire is a better, more rounded view of life in Panem, but the same problems from The Hunger Games return to haunt this book. This time around Katniss and Peeta tour the different districts, so we get to see just how put down and dystopian this society really is. We see more interaction between the Capitol and the Districts, making the Good Guys seem more good and the Bad Guys seem more Bad.

Unfortunately, for someone who narrates the entire story, Katniss seems to be completely oblivious to anything that goes on around her. She notices, quite clearly and on multiple occasions, the symbol of the mockingjay in relation to rebel activity. The mockingjay was her symbol in the Hunger Games. She was the one who sparked the rebellion. And yet Katniss fails to put two and two together to figure out that she is the one all the rebels look to as a symbol of hope.

No, instead she spends her time trying to deal with Peeta and Gale. Gale is of course her childhood friend, who hunts in the woods with Katniss. He got maybe a page and a half total in The Hunger Games, and yet is apparently Katniss' true love. We see more of him this time in Catching Fire, but his screentime is once again far overshadowed by Peeta. It 's a poor romance when the heroine spends most of her time mooning over someone we hardly know while snubbing the character the readers have come to know and identify with.

The ending is rather abrupt and has little closure for the story. Much the same as the ending to The Empire Strikes Back, Catching Fire is a blatant setup for the next book. It's mostly exposition to lay the groundwork for part three, with more Hunger Games thrown into the middle to keep us pacified. And through it all, I still have no idea if Katniss likes Peeta or not.

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Enough Surprises to Keep a Reader Engrossed

Rating

Yes, the middle book of a trilogy is usually the weakest and this one is no different. In fact, I deliberately set the book aside until I also had the final book in hand. However, as "the middle," this was stronger than is usually the case and though not as good as the first book, it was a real pager-turner.

Some reviewers have made legitimate points about how this has a lot of summary as Katniss recounts the fallout after the games, and the Victory Tour. However, the tour gives readers (and Katniss) a chance to connect with the other districts making the revolution more than just District 12 vs the Capitol. And, the book does feel a bit like a retread of the first after Katniss learns that she must return to the arena. President Snow uses the 75th anniversary of the Hunger Games as an excuse to kill her by decreeing that all the tributes this year will be culled from previous victors. Though this could easily have been "Hunger Games the Remake", I found it was actually a clever way to segue into the upcoming rebellion. I thought the best parts of the first book took place in the arena, and that is the case here. This time her opponents are skilled killers who each won before. Plus, Haymitch begins pushing her to forge an alliance with some of them, who actively protect her and Peeta , so how will she be able to kill them? Throughout the book, Collins lays down breadcrumbs for the development of the revolution - each mention of the Mockingjay carries significance - and the ending is explosive with some surprises.

Catching Fire also develops the love triangle between Gale, Katniss and Peeta better than other series, such as Twilight. I never found Jacob to be a real contender because it was so obvious Bella would end up with Edward. Not so here. Even though readers don't spend much time with Gale, he has a history with Katniss and her memories evoke this. On the other hand is Peeta, who is so obviously in love with her, has fought by her side, and protects her as only he can. Halfway through the final book, and it's still not obvious who she will choose, which keeps the suspense high.

Though a cliffhanger is practically expected here, I never-the-less found the conclusion to be very satisfying. The book ends at a staging point; there is resolution in that all the pieces are in place and readers can move to the next stage - war. Overall, I could not put this book down and have already begun the finale. Highly recommended series!

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