Katniss' twisty 2nd Adventure! Mixed with a minor, unqualified treatise on issues facing sequels.

Here we rejoin our friend Katniss Everdeen as she's thrown into new adventures. I'm trying to write about this book without giving too much away. I'll start with my first impressions. At first I didn't like it as much as the Hunger Games. Though I think sequels sometimes struggle because they feel the same as the 1st book. And for me this is sometimes a good thing and sometimes bad. In this case it was slighty below the negative line. And as often happened to Harry Potter, the main character gets whiny, and when that happens I start to loose sympathy. Also one point of a sequel is to further hash upon issues established but not resolved in the 1st book. My Catching Fire/Hunger Games, reference here is Katniss' love triangle between the guy she at first had to love in the arena and now doesn't know, and the guy she had all along but didn't know he loved and now doesn't know. Really I didn't care about that aspect of the book this time around. The reasons for this and could transend to other sequals, especially in the teen section, is that in the 1st book Katniss discovers love or at least the pubesent signs of it. This is sweet and endearing. In the 2nd book it turns into teen drama, which is blah, blah, blah, grow up no one cares stuff. Also and I think the biggest challenge facing a sequel is a sibling of "This book feels the same as the 1st" and that is it not feeling fresh. Think about it, this blog exists because there is nothing in the world like diving into a new book, by an author you've never read. It's crisp and fresh like a new piece of celery. Books rock because of their variety, no two books are the same because they are written by people and no two people are the same. Anyway Catching Fire felt a little stale.
Now for the twisties. Despite all these pedantries the book was a smashing success. What got me was how the author created a feeling of predictablity but still managed to twist on you. Explanation: I felt like the book was predicable, like I knew what was going to happen but there were still big surprises along the way that threw me off the scent. Also Catching Fire shows its age group, it's written for a younger audience and in this book it shows. The Hunger Games is thrilling for any age, but Catching Fire gets a little more teeny. What I mean by teeny here is that it's the 2nd book, Collins is no longer laying out the plot she's having to turn and juggle it, which is a challenge to be sure. To wrap up my tangled mess of an entry, I'll sum the great feeling of suppossed predictability created in this book. It starts out familiar with the characters having to deal with minor sticky situations, then a twist sends them into a bind which you can't figure how they'll get out of, then it all blows up. Where the book shows it maturity level is that all along the way the signs are given which a more experienced reader picks up on and then in the moment of trial for the character you know they'll realize what you know and thereby what they'll do. Translation: At point A in the book you learn the solution to a problem at future point B, when point B arrives you know the next step, the twist comes because you don't know the step after next. Example you learn how to escape from handcuffs, so when you find yourself in handcuffs you escape, now you've escaped, now what? And this is what made the book interesting, the hints watered down the most tense moments of the book, but I liked it because I didn't know what the next step was.
Overall not as good as the 1st, a little stale. I recommend the Hunger Games as a must read, but you can leave Katniss at the end of the Hunger Games, and find yourself perhaps not completely satisfied but not at a loss for nightly sleep. Honestly it's a 2nd book of 3. If you were to read the Hunger Games and still required absolute resolution then I'd say skip Catching Fire, just have me sum it up for you in 3 sentances and go straight to the 3rd when it comes out. Last word: a worthwhile yet unnecessary read.
An apology for a close, I'm sorry for the length of this entry. It's 9:00 and I have nothing to do from now untill class at 12:30, but let me make it up to you. I found a new word, new to me. Dystopia: an anti-utopia. Often a futuristic totalitarian government of control and violence. I'm glad to know this word because I love these types of books.