
I really liked the first book in this series and was so excited about reading the second one that I totally badgered my friend at work who loaned me
The Hunger Games until she brought this one in for me. I tore through it in about a day and a half, but because it had such a cliffhanger ending I didn't know what to think of it until I'd read
Mockingjay and seen where it was all going.
Perhaps precisely
because I couldn't see where it was headed, I went back and forth several times during my reading of
Catching Fire.
At first I was intrigued to see Katniss back home (yay Gale! yay Prim and the evil cat!) and to find out what happens with victors when they go home. Then I got bored because nothing much seemed to happen, and Kat wanted to run away and desert the rest of District 12, and the whole love triangle was boring me a bit.
Then things begin to heat up, with the ominous visit of President Snow and the hints that Kat has become a symbol for rebels in other districts; I was eager to see what Katniss would do with her notoriety and role as rebel-inspirer, since one of the things I felt got shortchanged in the first book was the political component. Then
( spoilers and me waffling some more )Well, you get the idea. In the end, I had to suspend judgment on this one until I'd gone on to the third one, though the twists and turns kept me engrossed and each time I thought it was becoming predictable it changed. And I admit I was very surprised at
( the ending )I very much liked the expansion on the cruelty of the Capitol and the Government. In the first book, they seemed simply brutal and oppressive. In this one, we get a sense that they've raised it to a positive art: for example, Katniss being forced to helplessly watch as
( bad things happen ) These guys aren't just thugs, they're artists of psyops and pain. This is disturbing, but it's much more powerful and hints that Kat's battle isn't going to be a military one, at least not wholly.
So having now read
Mockingjay (which I'll talk about tomorrow), I give
Catching Fire a three. Not because it's not as good as
The Hunger Games, but because I don't think it really needs to be -- or works well as -- a standalone novel. Its contributions to the story arc, while crucial, could have been told in fewer pages. I would have combined the second and third volumes and then edited this section down a bit, so it was all a single volume.
Parenthetically, this second trip into the Arena gave me flashbacks to
The Maker of Universes and its sequels in the
The World of Tiers series. Totally different ambience, but similar in the protag's being constantly dropped into artificially-created more-or-less malevolent worlds where he has to fight his way through.
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