[Book Review] Catching Fire

Catching Fire, book two of The Hunger Games picks up where Book One left off, our heroine and survivor of the Hunger Games left wondering exactly how bad things will get now once her and her partner from the Hungers Games return triumphant.
The Honeymoon does not last long.

And, really that’s what helps this series. It’s refreshing after watching television and reading comics for so long there is no status quo. There is no: We lived happily ever after. Returning to District 12 the Katniss and Peeta are now being housed in Victor’s Lane where as the name implies is where the victors of the Hunger Games are housed once they win.
Unfortunately, President Snow does not let things last long. The conditions of District 12 deteriorate more and more as Snow begins to make life even harder for Katniss and Co. It would appear after the end of the Hunger Games that several of the Districts are rising up against him. Even with Katniss and Peeta traveling from District to District on the celebration tour their efforts to “sell” their love for each other to the cameras only makes things worse. The visiting of each district is a great way to expand on the universe that was created in book one.
The rebellion has gotten so much worse that when the seventy-fifth Hunger Games are announced that the game’s participants will now be made up of one male and female victor from each District.
Back to the games we go, the training, the prep teams and the costumes. The interviews. The lying to the cameras get bigger and bigger. This time the games are not a rehash from the last book are different enough to make it as memorable as the last book.
The victors from the other districts are memorable enough to remember most of them even if they live or die.
Overall the book gets darker as main characters suffer and the world building gets a little bigger.
If and when Catching Fire arrives on the big screen expect to hear a lot of “The Empire Strikes Back”-style talk.