Book Twenty-eight: Catching Fire

Book Twenty-eight: Catching Fire
Finished: May 28
Pages: 391

Okay, so I might have been less than truthful about The Hunger Games in my last post. It might seem that I was a bit ambivalent about my enjoyment of the book. I checked out the sequel before I left work on Friday, went home, and finished Catching Fire before I went to bed Friday night. I couldn't put it down. I had to know what was going to happen with the main characters, Katniss, Peela, and Gale, not to mention their families. I wanted to know what would happen to the games themselves, and where the author was going with this world and the people in it. This book certainly delivered. This second chapter fleshes out the consequences to the actions taken in the first book. I like that the book doesn't pull its punches. When violence is called for, violence happens. You can love characters and then watch them hurt and maybe even die. If your government is willing to hurt the public, then the public does get hurt. The author gives brilliant descriptions of costumes, scenery, and technology that really help the reader to get a foothold in a world that is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Having a sequel allows the author to flesh out the details that had been left fuzzy: the government, the other districts, and everything else that wasn't really explained well in the first one.
I'm not going to lie to you, these books are a real thrilling read, and I hope that more people will go read them, if only to be able to recommend them to their students, or their children. They are better written than Percy Jackson, but obviously the world is much less developed than either that world or Harry Potter. While I still wouldn't highly recommend this book to those who don't like science fiction, they're totally worth it if you do like science fiction.

Good Reading,
Caitlin