Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (2009)

– Part 2 of The Hunger Games Trilogy.

“I can’t really think about kissing when I’ve got a rebellion to incite”

Our kick-ass heroine Katniss Evergreen has got the world to save so can’t afford to get all soppy over boys.

Peeta is the main love interest, but, frankly, he’s a bit of a wimp. “You’re my whole life” he gushes and , wisely, she is drawn more to the dashing Gale.

There’s also a strong hint that she fancies the most significant new character, Finnick Odair, who is described as  “tall, athletic , with golden skin and bronze-coloured hair”.

But ,while at some point, Katniss must have lost her virginity to Peeta this fact is implied rather than central to her story. The subtext seems to be that revolutions are more important than hanky-panky.

Catching Fire is the second of The Hunger Games trilogy which may be aimed at a teenage audience but is such an entertaining fast-paced concept that anyone who is young at heart will enjoy it.

The machinations of the Capitol are presented more vividly than they were in the first book and are given a human face in the form of the sinister President Snow  who has “the smell of blood on his breath”.  The Capitol is a recognizably modern ‘big brother’ regime in that it uses the media to its own advantage. The TV is a mixture of propaganda tool and a display of power. The fact that the Hunger Games are televised as a kind of sadistic reality show is a vital part of its appeal to its privileged citizens.

But the peasant population have had about as much as they can take and the 17 year-old Katniss is the unwitting, and initially unwilling, symbol of rebellion. Eventually she realises that it’s a case of them or us and boldly announces: “I want to start an uprising”.  Unfortunately, she hasn’t really thought through what this entails and underestimates the magnitude of the evil forces she is up against.  She may be the spark to mass action but quickly has to acknowledge that she “had no way to control the flames”.

The novel is a battle of wits to survive the twin threats of the Capitol’s power brokers and the opponents she is pitched against in the life or death arena of the Hunger Games. Her aged, and often drunken, mentor Haymitch advises her that she has to know who her enemies are, but her allies too are only useful if you she can ignore the small fact that she will eventually have to kill them before they kill her.

Suzanne Collins does an admirable job of keeping the level of tension high and in many ways this is even better than the first in the trilogy. It’s a real page-turner and the book ends, like most of the chapters, with a good old-fashioned cliff hanger making the question of whether or not to read third and final instalment , Mockingjay. a  no-brainer.

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