Catching Fire
My daughter wanted to finish the series even though I kind of wanted to stop after the first book. I felt that the first book had its own decent conclusion and I couldn’t imagine what else the authoress could pull off on subsequent books since the conceit of the series has been done.
Well, suffice to say that I wasn’t disappointed in my expectations. The 2nd book of The Hunger Games was as bad as I imagined. Contrary to my expectations that the authoress would not recycle the same ideas, she did and did it in the most contrived manner.
Katniss and Peeta is now back in the games and its only because of some asinine rules that states every 25 years the capital can make winners of previous games play the games again. The rule is rather non-sensical since you need a boy and a girl, and I’m sure some districts only end up with only having one winner or winners of the same sex.
The more I think of how the games are setup with all these special rules and all, the more silly I think the whole idea of it is. Not to say Young Adult books need more plot or fully flshed out world, but the world that the authoress has thought up is nonsensical even to brutish dictators of the 20th century!
Anyway, the plot of this book is basically to drive the characters to fight in the arena again. A lot of the plot is rehashed from the first book, but since the spectacle of it being the first time is largely gone, the only thing remaining is to have the characters be more defiant and what not.
A lot of the plot also centralizes around how President Snow hates Katniss for defying him, and how she’s now the sparkplug of district wide rebellion. The president is really stupid in the sense that he can’t see how using her to show that she’s subservient to the president’s cause would be far more damaging than simply killing her.
Anyway, quick summary of the book. stupid people doing stupid things causes stupid events to happen. I feel that this is one of the worst books I’ve read this year. Highly do not recommend.