Catching Fire - A Cliffhanger for the Ages

*This Review Contains Spoilers*

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Four out of Five Stars

Catching Fire is the second book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. After the 74th Hunger Games, Katiness Everdeen has unintentionally sparked a rebellion within the districts. Therefore, President Snow makes a surprise visit warning Katiness if she does not shut down these rebellions during her Victory Tour or pay the price. Unfortunately, Katiness' visits only fueled the uprising, so President Snow gave her a price to pay: another round in the Hunger Games. President Snow was allowed to do this due to the upcoming Quarter Quell, saying only former tributes were permitted to participate in the games. 

Katiness and Peeta become the tributes from District 12 for the 75th Hunger Games. When thrown into the arena, they become allies with Beetee, from District 3, Finnick, District 4, Johanna, District 7, Peeta, and Katiness. After a while in the arena, Beetee comes up with an invention to electrocute fellow opponents. However, this ends the Hunger Games by blowing up the arena, and Beetee, Finnick, and Katiness are rescued by some space ship. 

This space ship turns out to be a part of District 13, a lost district that had built an entire society underground, planning a rebellion against the Capitol to end the Hunger Games. Unfortunately, Katiness had no idea about this Rebellion like Snow intended her to. After this scene, this is where the novel ends, and is why I believe this book has the worst cliffhanger of all time. 

I have no complaints about this novel besides the fact that the beginning felt very drawn out in the beginning. The little plot arches about the people from District 8 and the new oppress Peacekeeper, who's name I cannot remember. The reason I rated this only four stars will be mentioned at the end of the review. 

Besides this, I have to say this is my favorite book in the series, but I have not read the third and final book. If Collins keeps this up, I will be very pleased. Another thing that I enjoyed was how we had character development between other tributes while training for the Hunger Games. I felt this is what the last book was truly missing as we did not find the names of many of the tributes until later in the Games. 

Another significant change I found was that there was more description in this book than the last one. The deaths in the previous book just seemed to be only there, except for Rue's, but the deaths and the fights in this novel were much better. Of course, I do not particularly appreciate reading about death, but the way Collins now portrayed death in Catching Fire was much better. Going off of description, I felt the characters now had more personality. I understand the characters have their personalities for the Capitol and personalities around each other, which was more relevant than before. 

I rated this book four stars because it was not life-changing, but it was merely a good read. 

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