Catching Fire

The Hunger Games trilogy got better with every book and I have high hopes for this movie. Enjoy the trailer!

Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding. The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay--no matter what the personal cost.

From that heck of an ending in Catching Fire I knew that the last installment in the series was going to be very different and it didn't disappoint. More than ever I could see the behind-the-scenes network of rebels, the grownup world where Katniss was a kid who was not treated like one and where, as valuable an asset as she was, she was simply a pawn in the games of people easily twice her age. In Mockingjay she finally saw her life for what it has become and desperately tried to find a way out all the while having no choice but to continue playing her part.
To me Mockingjay is the book where Katniss truly becomes a strong heroine. Some might argue that in this book she is rescued, supported and kept safe more than ever before, and while that is true I have said it before and will say it again, to me not needing anyone to have your back isn't necessarily a sign of strength. Knowing your weaknesses and taking them into account while moving forward is. Questioning what people tell you and making up your own mind is. Seeing the true nature of things that aren't as straightforward as a knife or an arrow and acting according to this knowledge is.
I've always seen Katniss as been capable of the same kind of cruelty and manipulativeness as President Snow for example, but her goals have never been selfish or cruel. She may have only ever loved two people, her father and her sister, but everybody else has never been just collateral for her and this always made her capable of doing what needed to be done without losing her humanity or her sense of self. I don't think that Katniss is a particularly sympathetic character, what with her tendency to fall back on the old faithful adage of "offense is the best defense" unfairly hurting people in the process, and her curiosity about how her displays of affection affect the two rivals for her heart, but I do like her for the good in her.
Fandoms tend to compare books and series, and trash some while showering others with praise. I tried really hard to enjoy this series on its own merit but there were scenes that awakened a very strong sense of deja vu in me. I couldn't help noticing similarities in character dynamics and entire scenes and wondered on more than one occasion whether haters trash that other series just because, without even bothering to read the books, or they truly don't notice these things. If there was anything that spoiled the Mockingjay experience for me this was it.
I keep trying to decide what was my favorite thing, section, element about this book and inevitably I come back to how well it shows that life isn't black or white, bad things can have goodness in them and good things can have darkness hiding deep inside. Another thing I liked, although not in the straightforward sense, was that at the end of the day the choice everybody's been waiting for Katniss to make was ultimately made for her, whether she or we the readers like it or not. Oh the irony.
Mockingjay was the most complex, nuanced and mature book of this series. Because of that, and despite the deja vu moments, it will always be my favorite Hunger Games book.

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire picks up a short while after the end of The Hunger Games with Katniss at odds with both Peeta and Gale and with President Snow working to contain the effects of Katniss's actions in the Games by threatening her into proving to the country that she is just a girl madly in love, who only wanted to not lose her sweetheart. She doesn't know it but unrest is growing in Panem, and she with her mockingjay is the symbol of the rebellion. This dynamic is the foundation of the story from here on out - people planning and plotting in the background while all Katniss really wants is to live in peace with her family and to spend her days hunting. She is the reluctant hero, with everybody but herself realizing her influence, and using her for their purposes.
The first part of the book is relatively slow, after all Katniss is at her best in a survival situation and whiling away her time at 12 isn't particularly action-packed, but when the rules of the Quarter Quell are announced and there isn't a shadow of a doubt that the Capitol is out for her blood action slams into high gear and doesn't let up will the very end in the best traditions of The Hunger Games.
My favorite part of this book was the introduction of new characters who enriched the world Suzanne Collins created, allowing us a peek at the past victors and their lives of annual coaching of tributes and the Capitol keeping them all on an unimaginably tight leash. Once again Katniss can't see beyond the immediate task at hand but she has a good heart and a mentor who is possibly the craftiest victor in the history of the Games. I have to say, the relationship between Katniss and Haymitch is possibly the most interesting one in the series. They don't particularly like each other but it's hard to doubt that they are as similar as any other two characters in this series and watching them interact and work together gave spice to the story.
Throughout the book I couldn't shake the feeling that while Katniss's affection for Peeta was real it somehow only bloomed under pressure from the Capitol. At home she was a teenager who did her best and was angry at him for not understanding the game she was made to play, yet as soon as the cameras were on them and no place was outside of the Capitol's earshot she began to need him, understand him and want to support him. It was like a circumstance-activated survival instinct that made her acknowledge Peeta as an ally only under certain conditions. I didn't get an impression that Katniss herself realized this, but as I said earlier, she is at her best when lives are on the line and it's time to act, not in analyzing and introspection.
Whereas The Hunger Games ended with things as buttoned up as they could be Catching Fire ended on a cliffhanger that left me staring at the page with my brain barely able to process what happened and doing the equivalent of the "Wait, what?!?!" stutter. I actually had to re-read the last few pages before things snapped into place in my mind. When they finally did I knew that Mockingjay was going to be good. Really good. Fortunately I already had the book.

Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games," a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed.

For a while now people have been telling me that I had to read Suzanne Collins's best-selling trilogy but I resisted. The hype was too much and when the movie came out it only became worse. I told my friends I'd read it "one of these days". Finally one of them just handed me the book and told me to ask for the next one when I was done. It lay on top of the pile for a few weeks until I started feeling bad for keeping it for so long. So I picked it up and... couldn't put it down, breaking only to do the necessary things, such as eat, sleep and go to work.
Collins's ability to keep a breakneck pace even with the unhurried scenes helped with that of course, but her storytelling and masterful world building played a tremendous role as well. The only thing that irked me was the fact that everybody had their "eyes trained" on something or someone all the time, but that wasn't too hard to get past.
I've heard so much talk about Katniss being a strong character because she doesn't need a guy, or anybody else for that matter, to take care of her that I couldn't help but ask myself whether I agreed with that claim throughout the book and again when I finished reading it. The answer was invariably "no". Now, now, hold the booing and the stomping, there is a method to my madness. Katniss is skilled at providing for and defending herself and her family, she's deadly even, but to me that's not strength, that's resilience, adaptability, will to survive, doing what needs to be done, so she is tough, sure, but strong? No so much, because toughness is not the same thing as strength to me. I don't see wanting/needing love, affection, another person's company, support or help as a weakness. To me not wanting that is a handicap. I think she's been so hurt that she has adopted an exoskeleton of sorts that prevents her from feeling some things, protects her from getting hurt, and when Prim was reaped the violent emotions cracked the shell and she's begun to come alive in a way. After all, in all of this book the only person I felt she really loved was Prim. I think Katniss has potential to become truly strong, but she is not there yet.
I'm a big fan of action and adventure, which this book has plenty of, but I'm also a fan of interesting characters and there's no shortage of those here either. I liked that every new person introduced was flawed somehow, had a story full of demons, even the ones who at first seemed like there wasn't much of a story to them, like Peeta. Having Katniss as the first-person narrator helped with the suspense because quite frankly the girl is not much of a great thinker or strategist. It's just as well though - sometimes it took her a while to figure things out and in the process more of the background story could be told.
Considering that we know that there are three books in the series and that there is a love triangle conflict it wasn't much of a mystery that both Katniss and Peeta would survive, but I was looking forward to finding out what would happen to make books 2 and 3 necessary. In observance of the no-spoiler policy for the sake of possibly a handful of people who have not yet read the books or seen the movie I won't go into detail, but let me tell you, it was good. I didn't expect it to happen quite as it did so after a relatively predictable novel a surprise ending was welcome.
By the end of this book it was obvious that the real story was only beginning and although Hunger Games didn't exactly meet my exalted expectations it promised more and I began Catching Fire without even a day's delay. Fortunately my friend had the book ready for me before I asked for it. Come back next week to find out what I thought!