Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

I'll be giving away no spoilers in this review. Not just because the book is still a few months from being released and that would be rude, but because the events in Catching Fire are so shocking that it would take away some of the spark and effect if you didn't get to experience them for yourself firsthand. If you haven't read The Hunger Games yet I suggest you do so. As far as I'm concerned, it's this decade's The Giver.

If you have read The Hunger Games, by now you know that Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have been declared co-champions for their Hunger Games after outlasting the twenty-two other participants and then threatening to kill themselves, which would have meant there would be no victor, a huge embarrassment to the Capitol. Katniss knows that their act of defiance, winning the games on their own terms, will not go unpunished. Little does she know how extensive that punishment will be.

Though I've been excited to read this for a while, I was still hesitant to once I got it. Could it really improve upon the first book? Or, like other later books in different series, would it negate all of my positive feelings for The Hunger Games altogether? After reading the first couple of chapters I was afraid it would be the latter. My big fear was that this insane world that Suzanne Collins has created would be pushed aside in favor of an entire book about which boy the heroine was going to pick. Peeta or Gale? Gale or Peeta? The last thing I want is for people to come away from these books with only the thought that Katniss is a placeholder for their affections for one of the guys. Team Peeta! Team Gale! Sure, there's love and there's kissing, but other things happens, too, more important things -like 95% of the time!

But I shouldn't have worried. Catching Fire was in no way the letdown I was thought it might be. Some of the foreshadowing was a bit clunky and I definitely predicted some things before they happened (you're going to either really love or really hate the events of page 172, but no matter what you won't be able to look away), but I don't think anyone could have foreseen all of the surprises, twists, turns, and even brutality. Because every time you think the Capitol has shown how evil they can be, they bump it up a notch. Or fifty.

Not every chapter is a cliffhanger, but they don't all have to be. It's nice to have some subtlety once in a while. In fact, one of my favorite parts was the juxtaposition of the twelve districts, none of whom have enough to eat for their citizens, with the carefree residents of the Capitol who eat so much that they force themselves to throw up so that they can continue partying and feasting.

Suzanne Collins has done more than shed the "sophomore slump" that the sequels to so many successful books have fallen into. She's written an unforgettable companion to its equally fantastic predecessor.