Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Book Two – Hunger Games Trilogy
Review by Fran
After I read the Hunger Games, I didn’t know what to expect from Catching Fire. A lot of heart-wrenching moments (which I did get). Also, I was scared that it wouldn’t be as great as one would expect it to be, but don’t be scared because, well, Ms. Collins delivers. And I mean big time.
Catching Fire picks up a few months after the end of Hunger Games. The plot starts pretty much developing when Haymitch tells Katniss that the Capitol is quite pissed at her for going against them when she and Peeta were going to kill themselves so that if they couldn’t both be victors, then neither of them would be.
The real threat begins when Katniss goes home before going to the “Victory Tour” (The tour that will take Peeta and her to every district as the victors of the 74th Hunger Games). There are some guards in the crowd, and her mom is sort of nervous, then she finds out the President of Panem himself wants to talk to her. President Snow tells Katniss that even though most people believed that she was willing to kill herself because she loved Peeta and couldn’t stand losing him, he knew otherwise and that it could lead to more people defying the
Capitol. As a result, President Snow tells her that in the tour, she must make sure everyone believes that it was all out of love.
Then there’s the tour, they visit every district & not going into further detail, they act like they are in love in love just like the President told them to. When Katniss sees the President again when she has to go to the Capitol, he says he is not satisfied with their performance. Katniss doesn’t understand how he can be unhappy when she and Peeta got engaged on live television. The real shocker comes when Peeta and Katniss are back home after the tour and they tune in their TV’s to watch the President reveal the “Quarter Quell” (This is like a special edition of the Hunger Games every 25 years). This is when Suzanne throws a bomb on us. I was expecting anything, for Gale to be chosen as tribute, or well, anything that could come across as painful to Katniss. Well, I was wrong, dead wrong.
It turns out that for the 3rd Quarter Quell, they would choose the tributes from among the victors of each district. Since Katniss is the only girl victor in district 12, she’s forced to go back to the games. Haymitch was supposed to go with her according to the reaping, but of course Peeta volunteers and they go back to the Games where they will be forced to fight their fellow victors. After that, they go through the same process they did for the last Hunger Games (the interviews, training, and their private session with the gamemakers).
Finally, the new games begin and 8 tributes die in the very first day. And for the third day, the tributes are already down to 7. Among those 7 tributes, all of them were in Peeta and Katniss’ alliance but two, so they were setting a trap for them. A big one. But in order to set the trap, Katniss and Johanna (one of the tributes from their alliance) have to split up from their group. That’s where things get even weirder as Johanna (who is supposed to be their ally) hits Katniss right in the head and knocks her out. When Katniss wakes, she has a deep cut in her arm. Then one of their supposed allies appears but she no longer trusts him, so she waits until he’s gone and goes back for Peeta to tell him what happened so they can break from the alliance. That’s when she founds another of their allies on the floor with a knife wrapped with the wire from the trap and she figures out what he was planning to do and wraps one of her arrows with the wire and destroys the force field surrounding the arena. She blacks out, and when she wakes up, she’s on a plain with Haymitch and Plutarch (the head gamemaker). However, they couldn’t rescue Peeta.
And then Gale (Katniss’ best friend, who’s also in love with her) appears, and that’s when we all read the biggest cliff-hanger in the history of cliff-hangers. When Katniss asks about her mom and her sister Prim, Gale says they’re safe but that they aren’t home in district 12. Katniss asks why, Gale says they got bombarded, and then Katniss repeats: they’re not in district 12? and then BOOM!
Gale says: Katniss, there’s no district 12.
And that, with that very sentence, the book ends. Yes. It’s insane. I think I was unable to move for a few minutes.
Now, do I think you should read it? Yes, I swear once you start reading it, you just can’t drop it. This book is ridiculously suspenseful, breathtaking and overall original. There are a lot of gut-wrenching twists and turns that leave you gasping and hyperventilating. Also, this book is a little bit more descriptive than The Hunger Games (which I’m thankful for) and in a few words, it’s a great book.
Did I get teary more than once? Definitely (and I’m not even the sensitive type.)
Did my jawdrop a few hundred times? You can count on it.
How would I describe it in one word? Wow.
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