And Just When You Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse...: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

(Author's Note: DO NOT read this review if you have not already read The Hunger Games, unless you don't mind being completely spoiled on the ending of that book. I also would suggest that you wait until you have read Catching Fire before reading this review, as there will be minor spoilers. - S)


Catching Fire opens with Katniss Everdeen doing her best to adjust to her new life as a victor in the Hunger Games. She has a new house, money enough to provide for her family, and her victory ensures that all of District 12 will be well-fed for an entire year. But, at the same time, she is frightened. She knows that her stunt at the end of the Games, though it allowed both her and Peeta to survive, has put her family and friends in danger, and that they are all being watched for signs of further rebellion. Though Katniss herself is uncertain exactly what made her do it--was it an act of love, like she is forced to make everyone else believe, or was it defiant rebellion, or was it simply survival?--she knows what she needs to make everyone think in order to survive, but she also knows--or at least learns over the course of her Victory Tour in the first third of the book--how others chose to see it. Seeing someone standing defiant, forcing the Capital to change the unchanging rules of the bloody contest that defines their power over the districts in order to keep from losing it as a symbol of that power, appears to be the last straw that a lot of desperate people needed, and despite all Katniss, Peeta, and the Capital tried to do to spin her act of defiance into something else, people have chosen to take it as they saw it, and not as the propaganda wants them to see it.

Catching Fire is a faster-paced book than The Hunger Games, covering more ground and giving more insight into the power behind the dictatorship that runs Panem, and revealing it all to you through Katniss's eyes and thoughts is a fascinating, if sometimes frustrating, window into her true transition from child to adult: seeing that actions have consequences, that they are not always what you would expect, and that the world is a much more complicated place than it appears. One lesson that both Katniss and the leaders of Panem should learn but really don't over the events of this book is that you cannot control what others chose to do as a result of your actions or your example. All Katniss wants to do is protect her family, her friends, and the two young men that she cares about and that care about her. She is willing to do anything and everything towards that goal, but she is destined to fail because she has no control over the fact that the people in the other districts have chosen to use her act of defiance in the arena as the spark that is lighting the fire of rebellion across the country. And, in truly despicable fashion, the country's leader, President Snow, chooses to make her feel responsible for everything that happens as a result.

Though this book is very much the middle book of a trilogy, dropping you into the action from the very beginning and ending with no satisfactory conclusion, it is well-paced and pulls you through the events with breathless alacrity. Everything for Katniss happens in a whirlwind, and she is fighting every step of the way just to keep her friends and family safe. You feel her helplessness and desperation acutely, you rage at the injustice of President Snow's continued punishments, and in the end your heart breaks with hers over what she loses even as you are picking up the next book in the hope that everything will turn out alright in the end.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins