My Review of Catching Fire

The premise is this. Right after the Hunger Games, and just as the publicity tour is about to begin, Katniss still finds herself pretending to love Peeta in order to survive and this pains Peeta deeply.

Gale’s relationship with her on the other hand disappears slowly, and even though Katniss now lives in a luxurious home due to her victory at the Hunger Games, she finds herself itching to go back to the village where her old dilapidated house still is.

Also, President Snow pays her a visit and issues a warning, stating that her life and that of her family is in danger except she can prove to everyone that eating the deadly berries in the arena was just because she was madly in love with Peeta, and could not live without him, and not because she was being rebellious.

The reason he is particular about this is because, unknown to Katniss that little act of defiance is causing an uprising and her and Peeta are going to the center of it all.

My thoughts.

In as much as the book was quite interesting, I found this to be a bit tedious, slow and kind of over written. I know people keep saying that this was their best part of the series, but it wasn’t for me.

The Hunger games was quick, meticulously planned, there was unintentional romance, gore and other dangerous elements infused into it. Catching Fire on the other hand was a bit too much of talking and telling.

The real action only started towards the middle of the book, when a special announcement was made about the new Hunger games, and how that decision was going to affect Katniss and Peeta.

Anyways the characters were well written as usual, I found Gale to be a bit lifeless though, but that’s probably because of the role he was forced into. The arena was just awesome with the new booby traps, and tasks. 

There was a salt water lake this time where they all entered the arena, a lot of force fields, blood rain, mutated monkeys, and best of all new tributes, even though they were kind of old (read the book to know what I mean).

Of all the characters, the two characters I would love to see how they turn out in the movie is Finnick, sold for sexual favors because of his good looks, and Inobari (I hope I spelt that right.)

An amazing book still, one I would recommend. I give it 3.5 stars.