Catching Fire

     Once The Hunger Games were completed, they would come again next year....unfortunately. So Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire (New York: Scholastic, 2009) continues the story of Katniss, Peeta and the impending revolution. It doesn't get much better, since it's the middle act of a three-part series, it mainly sets up for the big conclusion at the end. We learn a bit more about Haymitch's backstory, which explains a lot, but he - and everyone else - are possibly even flatter and uninteresting this time around. The DRAWN-OUT love triangle continues, as Katniss deals with trying to decide whether she likes Peeta or Gale better. That is maddening. The pacing is all haywire, going on for two pages about various wedding dresses, then leaping over months of drawn-out agony for neighbors in District 12, passing over their worsening condition in another two pages. That's the first example I can think of. Overall, it plods along without much of anything interesting happening, and is a total waste of a lot of now-dead trees.

     So Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark won the 74th edition of the Capitol's Hunger Games last year. Along the way, Peeta confessed that he's loved her for basically forever, which they use as a strategy in order to survive in the arena. It worked, sure, but since in real life she can hardly stand him, that makes things awkward once they get back home to whatever "real life" is now that they're nationwide celebrities, and thus summoned for all sorts of TV specials, parades, feasts, etc. Katniss goes hunting, because that's what she does. When she can, she hunts with Gale, who has all the emotional capacity, not to mention character complexity, of a rock. President Snow comes personally to Katniss's house to inform her that the other districts were inspired to rebel by her decision at the Games, and threatens that she has to shut them up. (Would he really come personally to deliver that message? I mean, really?)
     On a Victory Tour around the districts, while visiting 11 Katniss and Peeta thank the people for Thresh and Rue's actions. In response to this, the audience makes a "thank-you" gesture they saw Katniss make on TV, which gets several people killed. Peeta and Katniss become engaged during a staged interview, but their efforts to douse the glowing embers doesn't take. Katniss does a whole lot of monotonous pondering over who she likes better. District 8 revolted, and Katniss figures out that District 13, thought to be eliminated generations before, still exists.
     Since the 75th Hunger Games needs to be extra awful in order to make it special, previous victors must return to the arena to fight again. For District 12, that means Katniss and Peeta. They (with some prodding from Haymitch and Effie) make friends with the District 3 tech whizzes and a District 4 guy named Finnick. Most of these competitors have secretly teamed up to make sure Peeta and Katniss stay alive, and enough of them last long enough that they can blow up the force field trapping everyone in the arena. People from District 13 save Katniss, but they can't get to Peeta in time. So in retaliation, the Capitol blows up almost all of District 12.

#Wesley