Catching Fire
very insightful book
CATCHING FIRE
Series sell. Call it a trilogy, smack a number on it, pump out the books at the rate of one a year. If anything, the ascendancy of the series should be encouraging. “The Hunger Games,” the best-selling first book in Suzanne Collins’s planned trilogy, has a plot you think you’ve already heard. Two teenagers from each state of a totalitarian dystopia called Panem (America after an environmental apocalypse) are selected at random to participate in a reality show known as the Hunger Games. The novel follows Katniss Everdeen, the “tribute” from District 12.
By the way, I really liked “The Hunger Games.” But I love the new book, “Catching Fire.” “Catching Fire” begins with Katniss in the aftermath of her victory. With the calculated rebelliousness of her performance in the Games, she angered the leaders in the Capitol. So instead of enjoying semi-retirement, celebrity and all that free food, Katniss is drawn back into the arena. As a reader, I felt excited and even hopeful: could it be that this series and its characters were actually going somewhere?
It certainly helps that at the heart of this exotic world is a very real girl, the kind lacking even a single supernatural gift. (Those “real” types seem to be in short supply in children’s books lately.) In a memorable scene from the first book, Katniss is forced to exhibit her hard-earned archery skills before a panel of distracted Gamemakers more interested in the pig being served for dinner. Tired of being “upstaged by a dead pig,” she sends an arrow straight through the apple in its mouth. Katniss is essentially a kid throwing a tantrum. When she revisits the Gamemakers in “Catching Fire,” she uses the moment far more deliberately: to draw fire away from her teammate and break through the veneer of the people who “find amusing ways to kill us.”
Katniss is more sophisticated in this book, and her observations are more acute. Incidentally, just because this book is intended for a young audience doesn’t mean that Collins isn’t delightfully ruthless. Right before her return to the arena, Katniss is made to watch as a beloved adult character is beaten and dragged away. You could have the book, click here.
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