Catching Fire: Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire: The Hunger Games, Book 2; Suzanne Collins; Young Adult sci-fi, 391 p

Because things you do when you're just desperate to stay alive/keep your friends alive always have consequences! Terrible consequences. Katniss and Peeta's little eleventh-hour gambit in the first book turns out to be the straw that breaks the camel's back for the post-American country known as Panem (from the Latin expression Bread and Circuses, you get it, because they have to keep the people entertained and in check, okay, you get it, kind of a heavy-handed metaphor). Katniss doesn't figure this out until...fairly late in the book though, which makes me kind of doubt her intelligence. This girl is supposed to be an expert hunter, living off her wits to survive, and yet she's absolutely terrible at reading people. You would think those kind of skillls would go hand in hand, but apparently not. As a result, the horrible avalanche of doom that descends upon her is predictable to, it seems, everyone except Katniss herself.
The good part is, it's exciting and engaging, seeing this revolution start to unfold as the narrator is sort of on the sidelines the entire time. We the readers have to figure out what's going on based on limited information, and it's, dare I say, fun to see the grand horrible structure of Panem's Capitol fall apart into ruin and revolution. Makes you feel all warm and toasty. The fire theme is nice in this series, although really, the first book had more of it, and this second installment shifts from Katniss as The Girl Who Was On Fire to Katniss as The Mockingjay, which, again, is a little heavyhanded and obvious to everyone who isn't Katniss.
Of course the end is far too abrupt, especially since pretty much everyone tells me the third book is a disappointment. Ah well! It was fun while it lasted. I think I'll take a break from the series before reading Mockingjay.

The Hunger Games: Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games; Suzanne Collins; Young Adult, 374p

I read this book basically in one day and then started the second one as soon as possible, so my thoughts on this series are kind of blurred together. An excellent post-apocalyptic dystopian tale, plus some rather drippy teenage love triangle nonsense, but it's not NEARLY as bad as some other series I could mention, like Twilight, namely because Katniss, the main character, is so focused on the survival of herself and her family that she just does not have time to think about romance. Which is fantastic. She's much more of a role model for readers than, again, some other protagonists, but I'm not here to rant about how S. Meyer has pretty much glorified abusive relationships and set feminism back about fifty years.
Suzanne Collins, on the other hand, writes a very neat, tightly-paced adventure, and even though the plot twists (everything is horrible and it only gets more horrible!) are fairly predictable for the genre, they're carried off well, and The Hunger Games is a terribly engaging read. Also: It's REALLY GORY. A lot more gory than I was expecting from something YA! This was a pleasant surprise, actually, it makes the stream-of-consciousness narration from Katniss really pop.
I will continue this, with further thoughts, in my review of the second book. which should be posted in about fifteen minutes.