If You’ve Been Living Under a Rock and Haven’t Heard of It Yet… Review of Susan Collins’s “Catching Fire”

Its taken me quite some time to make it back to this trilogy.  I finished the first book before the movie came out but hadn’t had time to read the other two.  While, okay, it’s not so much that I didn’t have the time but that there were a lot of other books on my reading list ahead of them.  But, I’ve finally carved out the time and I’m finishing the series before something else comes up and I get too distracted (like the Song of Ice and Fire series I have sitting by my bed).  Now, most of you have probably at least heard of these books if you haven’t read them already, so my review is just a little out of date, but I figure it’s early for the release of the Catching Fire movie so I’ll pretend I planned it that way.

In the second book of the Hunger Games trilogy we pick back up where the first book left off.  Katniss is finishing her tour of the districts with Peeta while struggling to come to terms with what her actions in

the arena have done.  Katniss is forced to choose between her heart and what she knows is necessary to save the people she loves.  Even though Katniss throws herself into her role as girl-crazy-in-love she is unable to shake her label of girl on fire.  She has become the spark that lights rebellion in the district and President Snow chooses her to be the focus of his wrath.  As the Quarter Quell Hunger Games begin, and the mind-shattering twist is revealed, the districts rebellions come to a head and the mysterious District 13 is finally revealed.
Opinions on this book have been very split.  The high-school age readers I’ve talked to loved the whole series, the adult readers seem to be more critical.  I’ve heard everything from the last two books are slow, to boring, to not worth reading at all.  Personally, I really enjoyed Catching Fire.  While the first book of the series is the only book that can be read as a stand alone novel, Catching Fire adds depth to the story.  In this book we see how Katniss handles her celebrity, and her struggle to do what’s best without knowing which path to take will lead to the perfect outcome.  While Collins does spend a lot of time discussing the love triangle of Peeta-Katniss-Gale it’s important to remember Katniss is only 17.  While she’s forced to deal with adult problems, she is still a teen and Collins’s focus on this love triangle only strengthens the fact that our heroine is forced to deal with problems far beyond her maturity level.

This book focuses on the anger and tension in the other districts and exactly how bad things have gotten under the rule of the capital.  It shows the big differences between the haves and the have nots and gives the reasons behind the districts’ revolts.  Collins also goes into more details about the other district and while the focus stays on District 12 we get to hear more about the other districts while Katniss and Peeta are on their victory tour and through the other competitors in the Quarter Quell Hunger Games.  This is one of the things I wished book one had gone into in more detail, so I was happy to see that Collins had fleshed out Panem a little more in this book.

I did find the ending a little rushed in this book, but it’s really mean to be more than a bridge book than a stand alone story and it plays its part well.  You are left with too many loose ends to not pick up the third book and finish out the series but you get enough of a plot you don’t feel your time has been wasted with this book.  The Hunger Games trilogy is popular enough you shouldn’t need my recommendation to go read it, but just in case you’ve been living under a rock … these book are good. Go read them.