"Hail! to the victors valiant/Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes..."

Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins

       If you haven't read The Hunger Games and you think you will, be warned that this review has potential spoilers for The Hunger Games.  Catching Fire is the second in Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games Trilogy, following the story tales of Katniss and Peeta, two teenagers who survived the 74th Hunger Games.

       Catching Fire begins shortly after the first novel ended.  Katniss and Peeta, having had their victory televised throughout all of Panem, the victors on their district-wide victory tour of the country.  However, having won the games by trick and apparently middle-finger to the government to save her friend Peeta, President Snow of Panem is closely following Katniss and there are rumors of the sparks of rebellion throughout the nation.

       However, once the terms of the 75th Hunger Games are announced, with only former victors from past Hunger Games, it becomes quickly evident that Katniss and Peeta will have to go back into the arena and compete against some of the best of the best from the past competitions. 

I actually did like this book, especially the end.  The Catching Fire gives the reader more of a look inside the world of Panem, but I still wanted more.  When you have a novel set in the future and especially a dystopian future, I want a lot of explanation of what things look like, how things got that way, and what life is like in this time.  Hunger Games gave us a taste of this, but Catching Fire game us more, but still could have given us more. 

       Luckily, with the 75th Hunger Games, we get an array of characters for different districts who don't seem to just be replaceable cutouts of each other (most notably Finnick, the trident-wielding former winner); however, with the novel still told in first-person from Katniss, the character depth is a bit lacking with other characters...plus there are still a bunch of people who seem to die but we never see what happened or learn anything much about them, which felt more of a waste than anything. 

       Like I had said, I did like the novel and already have been able to read the final in the trilogy, Mockingjay.  Katniss's character does keep the novel going and is an interesting, compelling character.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

And yes, if you guessed that I was watching college football when I came up with the title for this post, good catch!