Catching Fire

Starred review from June 22, 2009
Suzanne Collins follows her bestselling dystopian novel, The Hunger Games
, with a sequel that’s certain to cement fans’ commitment to the trilogy.
Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins
. Scholastic Press
, $17.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-439-02349-8

Fresh from their improbable victory in the annual Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta get to enjoy the spoils only briefly before they must partake in a Capitol-sponsored victory tour. But trouble is brewing—President Snow tells Katniss directly he won’t stand for being outsmarted, and she overhears rumbles of uprisings in Panem’s districts. Before long it’s time for the next round of games, and because it’s the 75th anniversary of the competition, something out of the ordinary is in order. If this second installment spends too much time recapping events from book one, it doesn’t disappoint when it segues into the pulse-pounding action readers have come to expect. Characters from the previous volume reappear to good effect: Katniss’s stylist, Cinna, proves he’s about more than fashion; Haymitch becomes more dimensional. But the star remains Katniss, whose bravery, honesty and wry cynicism carry the narrative. (About her staff of beauticians she quips: “They never get up before noon unless there’s some sort of national emergency, like my leg hair.”) Collins has also created an exquisitely tense romantic triangle for her heroine. Forget Edward and Jacob: by book’s end (and it’s a cliffhanger), readers will be picking sides—Peeta or Gale? Ages 12–up.

This story and audio fulfill the promise of the stunning debut in this series, THE HUNGER GAMES, in which a cruel contest required 24 young people to fight in mortal combat. Carolyn McCormick delivers the first-person narrative of Katniss, the heroine whose brilliant strategy in that book thwarted tradition and turned her and her partner, Peeta, into victors. McCormick's phrasing is clipped, almost staccato, a style that embodies Katniss's secretive, wary attitudes. The tension builds as the oppression of the controlling President Snow inflames rebellion in Katniss and her fellow citizens. At the climax McCormick narrates at a breakneck pace as Katniss and Peeta compete against all previous winners of the combat tournament. Listeners will be eager for the next installment. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine