One quick note before I jump right into the review: I just want to say right up front that I’m going to do a horrible job of summarizing this book. Although it’s not very long, it is very plot-driven, and full of twists and turns and revelations. Additionally, many of the story’s essential elements hinge on the complex practices of Collins’ futuristic world and require too many explanations for a short review of this nature. Okay, disclaimer over.
Just because I am no longer a teenager (hey, it hasn’t even been two months, back off already!) doesn’t mean I’m too old to read YA fiction. Which is a darned good thing because Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins’ sequel to last year’s The Hunger Games and the second book in a planned trilogy, just came out a few weeks ago, and it’d be a shame to have outgrown fast, fun reads like this one.
Catching Fire picks up shortly after the conclusion of The Hunger Games with Katniss and Peeta, now Victors, struggling to readjust to life in District Twelve, and finding that things will never be the same again, for them or for anyone else. Their dual victory in the Games was pretty much a miracle, but now they have to figure out how to live their new lives, and Katniss is only just beginning to learn the full ramifications of her actions. Her elaborate deception (which ensured her and Peeta’s survival in the last book) has seriously compromised her relationships with both Peeta and Gale, and she now finds herself more alone than ever. Yet as a Victor, the consequences of her actions extend far beyond her personal life, and she begins to hear rumors and whispers of desperation and rebellion in some of the other districts. All of this plays out in the first third of the novel, at which point the next year’s Games roll around and the plot suddenly takes off like a bat out of hell, and doesn’t let up right until the very cliff-hangery ending.
On Katniss, the protagonist: Ok, this girl can be really dense sometimes, and she’s got about the emotional comprehension of a toothpick. I know she doesn’t mean to be insensitive to Gale or Peeta’s feelings; she just doesn’t know how to deal with them like a normal person. She’s spent so much of her life focused solely on survival that she hasn’t had a lot of time for emotional development. Still, it gets kind of frustrating when she’s got these too guys who are clearly nuts about her and she persists in blindly ignoring the complications of the situation.
On the action factor: I’m not sure if this book falls more into the fantasy or sci-fi genre, but it certainly has a lot of action. The Games are quite violent, but they’re not just a mindless bloodbath. It’s as much of a mind game as anything else. Collins really does an excellent job with the action sequences, and they’re always imaginative, entertaining, and well orchestrated.
On the funky names: While some fantasy authors are really good at creating made-up proper nouns that are also believable, this is not exactly Collins’ strong point. Katniss, Peeta, Panem – they’re all kind of awkward and just a bit lame. At the same time, some of the names are quite ordinary – Gale, Johanna, President Snow. I guess, since this world is supposed to be a futuristic version of North America, some of the old names survived and some new ones emerged.
In general: Both THG and CF are the kind of books that I can enjoy thoroughly (albeit briefly), but which I do not necessarily admire completely. They careen along at a break-neck, plot-driven pace that leaves in the dust any possibility for depth of characterization or sophistication of language. With a noticeable amount of grammatical errors (mostly of the who/whom variety), and a present-tense narrative voice (a pet peeve of mine), Collins writing strikes me as particularly unexciting, even for a YA novel. That being said, Collins has some serious story-telling chops, and her books are sky-high on the entertainment factor. The fact that I plunked down $18 for each book, in spite of their many eye-roll-inducing moments, is testament enough to the magnetic pull of the story. These books are a movie franchise just waiting to happen.
Final word: I try to incorporate at least one quote each book into my reviews, just to give a tiny taste of the text, but I found it difficult to choose a good one from this book (see above on Collins' unexciting prose). However, I did managed to find one that I thought worth highlighting: "As the alcohol overcomes my mind, I hear the glass bottle shatter to the floor. This seems appropriate, since I have obviously lost my grip on everything." - from Chapter 13 of Catching Fire.
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