Novel Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

            Honestly?

            I can’t think of a better word. Honestly?

            Well, after the first installment of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, I thought it couldn’t get much worse. Apparently I was wrong. And the trilogy’s second book, Catching Fire, proved to me how wrong I was indeed.

            I can’t number the things that annoyed me, or I would. So I’ll just list the main offenders.

            The first is Katniss’s attitude. Once again, we find our “heroine” in such a state of should-I-shouldn’t-I that it’s annoying. One minute she’s fine with this or that, the next she’s flying off the handle and making a mess, not only of herself, but for others like Peeta. (By the way, he hasn’t improved either. He’s still as annoyingly lovelorn and without resolve that I could puke.) Even her family can’t calm Katniss’s mood swings, and the flapjack quality about her gets real old, real fast.

            The second thing that annoyed me most is the fact that Katniss got put in the games AGAIN. What, that’s the best Collins could come up with for the start of the rebellion? Put another round of Hunger Games in? No secret, clandestine meetings underground while trying to funnel new tributes of the Capitol? No dodging spies on the different streets of the Districts while slipping from one border to another on apparently super-fast hovercraft? The best she could come up with is that? The originality level just bulleted down into the earth so far, I think China just had an earthquake.

            While Haymitch remained somewhat a likeable character, the others were either stereotypical, predictable, annoying, or just . . . poorly written. Cookie cutters. (Again, I think of Peeta and Gale and have to roll my eyes. How typical can you get for male characters, anyway? How flat! How boring! How . . . ugh.) The same goes for the plot. Must I redirect you to my previous paragraph? I couldn’t help but just wish for the book to be over. I thought the rebellion would be SO much more intense, so much more interesting. Instead?

 

            Eh.

            One thing I’ve noted about the entire story, though, is that there’s this element of hopelessness that not even the faintest glimmer of light will penetrate. Darkness hangs about the entire series, a pall of death and defeat that will never be overturned. And don’t even argue to bother that in our world things are the same, because I have news for you: THEY’RE NOT. There is a hope that could have been installed into this series that would have given Katniss such an undying determination to live instead of the annoying, flim-flam notion of “Do I live for Peeta or die for Peeta?”

            One person: Jesus Christ.

            Without Him, we have nothing. He is hope, and only His love can penetrate any darkness created by the world. Panem is so desolate and . . . doomed. There is nothing there. No “philosophy” to read into, no “parallel to our own society,” no live-and-die love story, NOTHING. This series is doom and gloom and death and gore. And terrible writing.

            I know that the love of Jesus will never be present in these books, but maybe there’s something—some element like pure, true, selfless love—that will bring at least a glimmer of light to this series in the last book. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. We’ll have to see.

            Catching Fire gets One flipped page out of Ten.

Novel Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

            Well, then. A book nearly everyone knows about since its movie release in March this year. That’s right, folks. You guessed it. (Or maybe you didn’t, I don’t know.)

            The Hunger Games.

            For a while there I was really hesitant to read it, due to the fact that kids are killing kids. Which, in no way, is excused by Suzanne Collins’ setting and Capitol crap. But I held my head high and read it to get the stupid thing out of my face. I wanted to see what everyone was so crazy about, so desperate to have everyone else read, so . . . glad with. Well, I read it.

            And I don’t see what the hubbub was so big for. (Mine and my mother’s theory is that it’s because there are no more Harry Potter books or movies.)

            But anyway.

            You know, usually I try to make my reviews concise and short, but I’m putting everything I felt into this one.

            The book started off with Katniss Everdeen being a pretty strong female character. She was stoic and didn’t like to show emotion so no one would take advantage of her and her family. That quickly changed, for no apparent reason. One moment she wants to be stoic and strong to intimidate other tributes from the rest of the Districts, then the next she’s all happy and jolly, or really moody and PMS-style angry, without cause for either. Oh, and the fact that she feels she doesn’t have any friends, yet acts like a complete dolt in the interview with Caesar? That really didn’t make any sense at all. Then, in the arena, her narrative and thoughts are so scattered at points it’s hard to follow what she’s thinking at all. At the end, she’s finally back to her somewhat strong self, but not really. She changed, but for the worst.

            And Peeta? Don’t even get me started. His “humble” act was aggravating when his kindness spilled over into sappiness around Katniss, and their brief talk on the roof before leaving for the Games was so brief in fact, I had no clue why it was put in there besides a rottenly failed attempt to give such a terribly-based book substance that would make it “acceptable” to the rest of levelheaded society. Anyway, Peeta’s sudden change in the arena—from nice guy to killer—was unexpected and random seeing as how he automatically switches back like it never happened. What the heck? Where did that kill come from? Peeta, you make no sense, and you’re such a flat and annoying, predictable character I’m really annoyed. Really.

            Speaking of romance, the attempted insertion of a romantic subplot failed. Miserably. Katniss never had any natural chemistry with Peeta, and don’t argue that that would be the intended purpose because of the Hunger Games “forcing” them together. She could just have easily killed him because he could just as easily have killed her. And she thought about it at the end as he raised his knife, so don’t tell me she was “conflicted” about Gale. That aspect was merely touched upon, if that. The excessive kissing and surface romance bubbling up through the dregs of scattered events and children’s’ deaths was enough to make me want to vomit.

            Oh, yeah. That. The violence. Not pleased at all. In terms of blood and gore, the violence was minimal, but in terms of content? Kids killing kids, being forced into an arena by the Capitol to fight to the death for entertainment? Yeah, in no way is that acceptable. There are areas in the writing world that should never be touched upon because they’re just wrong, and this is one of those areas. Imagine being twelve and given a knife, shoved into a ring and told to kill your older sibling. That happens every day in countries where it’s hidden. Kids kill each other for real, so why would you even want to write about such a topic in such a way when it can be touched upon just as forcefully with other, less dark ways. And believe me, a dark spirit lingers about this book.

            That reminds me. The Capitol. The way Collins passed them off, they seem less and less imposing every time we’re introduced to them; lazy and careless. They hardly seem intimidating besides the fact that they hold the Hunger Games every year as a punishment, but in terms of plot this is a weak bone in the seam of the Capitol’s spine. Or do they even have one? I can’t tell, the way they were written.

            With scattered, shallow writing and flat characters all around—unimposing, stereotypical villains and boring protags—I marvel that this book has been taken as such a “literary” “achievement.” (I separate these words because neither of them can be attached as a label to this book.) Suzanne Collins, while seemingly popular with this series, struck the flattest of notes and never recovered, for all 378 pages of inconsistency. Collins, quit your day job. Seriously. One flipped page out of Ten.