Book Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Published: 2009
Pages: 391
Category: Fiction: young adult, fiction: fantasy
I finished reading The Hunger Games in the middle of the night, and armed with a credit card, my computer and internet connection, I immediately purchased the sequel, Catching Fire. (literally. I got out of bed, turned on the computer and ordered it right then). Somehow my tired, and exhilarated brain decided this was a quicker way of getting my hands on Catching Fire than waiting to go to the bookstore the next day.
When the book finally arrived, I sat down and read it. It came to my house on a Friday afternoon and I didn’t sleep until I had finished the very last page. I cried the entire way through.
Catching Fire is my favourite book of the trilogy. It’s about standing up for what you believe in. Katniss is pulled into a war that she accidentally started, watching people take up her cause, convincing herself to take up the cause that she didn’t set out to be the poster child for. Figuring out what doing the right thing actually means. Katniss faces many things in this book, and she reacts precisely the way I would have reacted (at least, I like to think so). She breaks down, and then decides to do her best to keep the people she cares about safe.
Then I get it, what it means. At least, for me. District 12 only has three existing victors to choose from. Two male. One Female… I am going back into the arena. (173)
Katniss has unwittingly become the symbol of the revolution. A revolution she didn’t understand she was fueling, simply by trying to change the government’s rules.
Because in refusing to kill Peeta at the end of her first Hunger Games, she has shown their weakness, exposed a chink in their unfailing exterior and put a lot of people in danger.
In Catching Fire, things are in motion that Katniss is unaware of, that the other characters have purposefully kept her in the dark about, putting her in the role of a pawn, being moved across the chessboard by people whose motivations are not yet clear. The entire story was gripping. And there was still another book to come.
Philippa Adams 