Book Review: Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins

Read: September 2009

Catching Fire in one tweet-sized chunk:

Catching Fire does exactly that, igniting eyes-glued-to-the-page compulsion like few other books can. But then it goes off the boil.

“If it were up to me, I would try to forget the Hunger Games entirely. Never speak of them. Pretend they were nothing but a bad dream. But the Victory Tour makes that impossible. Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol's way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are we in the districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol's power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look down into the faces of the families whose children I have killed...”

Months have passed since Katniss and Peeta cheated the odds and scored a surprise and subversive victory in the 74^th Hunger Games. Now, faced with the obligatory Victory Tour and the need to once more impersonate a perfect couple, Katniss longs for the obscurity and freedom of her previous life. Though it is no longer a financial necessity, she continues to hunt outside the electrified fence and frequent the dodgy Hob. She regularly visits her old home, and the family of an old friend. It may not be perfect, but at least it is her life. For now.

One night, however, Katniss returns home to a surprise visit from the sinister President Snow who reveals that her little act of rebellion, her little victory over the Gamemakers, has had wider implications than she could have predicted. The situation is simple: the Victory Tour goes smoothly or she will be in trouble. For everyone knows that acts of rebellion, even ones solely designed to stay alive, rarely escape punishment in Panem. The effect of challenging an omnipotent state and winning, in any context, is to question the very existence of that power.

Catching Fire quickly proves an appropriate title as Katniss and Peeta struggle valiantly to save their lives and quench the flames that their actions have ignited. What they see on tour shows just how far things have progressed. There are rumours of a secret district, messages passed around in baked loaves of bread, simple acts of defiance. Katniss's Mockingjay pin increasingly comes to inspire and encapsulate the rising unease. And all the while President Snow waits in the background, smelling of blood and roses, embodying the omnipresence of the state, the ability to destroy with just a nod. Now seventeen, and in the middle of an awkward love triangle she has no interest in being part of, Katniss is propelled into a world of adult games for adult stakes. The violence may be less physical and imminent than it was in the arena, but it is no less deadly. And with the 75^th anniversary Quarter Quell looming and outright rebellion starting to spread, it appears that it wont be long before the authorities put out the fire once and for all...

The Hunger Games focused to such an extent on the eponymous games that we gained only a tantalising glimpse of the powerful forces that gave rise to it. Catching Fire is a far more intriguing book because the gaps start to be filled in. I've always been a fan of the middle book in a trilogy, or the penultimate one of longer series. They are generally the chance for an author to set the scene for what is to come, to focus on character and setting rather than plot. The slower pace allows for more detailed investigation into the background of a situation; the knowledge that there is already a committed readership eager to know more provides a certain leeway for an author to indulgence their imagination and flesh out their world.

And for the first 300-odd pages that is exactly what we get here. We travel with Katniss and Peeta as they travel to various districts of Panem on their Victory Tour, meeting people and seeing places that begin to round out the wider setting. All the while we are aware that events are progressing inexorably towards whatever the Capitol has in store for them, but that is in the future. It is enjoyable simply to stare out of the window and begin to understand. Questions are answered and more are posed. It is fascinating, enthralling, compelling reading. There are scenes back in the Capitol which are cinematic in scope and visual magnificence.

Everything is hotting up nicely.

But then it goes rapidly off the boil. Catching Fire turns out to be a deeply flawed and unbalanced book. It is as though, having spent so long providing background and detail to the world, Collins, loses her nerve and tries to cram in a rehash of The Hunger Games to ensure her readers don't get too bored. There may be a new terrain and different competitors, but it remains the same old Hunger Games. And without the freshness of the last games, the tension that has built up fizzles out. The world-weary and battle-scarred competitors are far less beguiling than their younger counterparts were, and they have neither the time nor, it seems, the compunction to make much of an impact. The effect is that what is supposed to be a dramatic finale to set of the final volume becomes a rushed and truncated affair.

Basically, Catching Fire is too short. The first two thirds are perfectly paced, intriguing and at least as eyes-glued-to-the-page-exciting as The Hunger Games. Probably more so. But the second Hunger Games is crammed in; there is no chance for the tension to ratchet up or the other characters to make sense. The entire reading experience is unbalanced by the distracting knowledge that the pages are running away quicker than the plot is finding resolution. It is a disappointing way to end what is otherwise an exhilarating read.

But pleasingly, the rerun of the Hunger Games is also its epitaph. For better or worse, the final book will have to tread completely new territory. There will be no comforting returns to the all encompassing power of Panem, no reality TV nightmares, no sparkling costumes on launch nights, none of the routine features that have worked so well up until now. The first two-thirds of Catching Fire suggest that Suzanne Collins is more than capable of living up to the hype that will inevitably surround its release. Mockingjay should be a dramatically different book, and I'm awaiting it all the more eagerly for this.

Edition shown: US edition, Scholastic Press, September 2009, ISBN: 9780439023498, 400 pp
Current UK edition: Scholastic, September 2009, ISBN: 9781407109367, 480 pp

7.5 out of 10

Book Review: The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Read: September 2009

The Hunger Games on one Tweet-sized chunk:
The Hunger Games is exciting, enjoyable, and escapist. A swashbuckling action-packed adventure guarunteed to engross readers of all ages.

I don’t know exactly when it was, but sometime last year I fell out of love with reading. Books that would usually be read in a couple of days were taking weeks to finish, whole weeks went by when I didn’t even think of picking up a book. It wasn’t that I was reading bad books but for some reason my mind wasn’t in a place to be transported by them as it often is.

Yet amidst the books I failed to get enthused by there were a few notable exceptions and first among them was The Hunger Games. I didn’t just read it from cover to cover. I devoured it. I read it whilst walking to work, I read it at my desk on my lunch break, I read it walking home again in the evening. I finished it at 4am on a weekday, then picked up and read the first chapter of the second book, Catching Fire, before finally snatching a couple of hours sleep. It is exciting, enjoyable, and escapist: some of the best things a work of fiction can be.

Set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future America known as Panem, The Hunger Games is an annual reality TV show that pits 12 boys and 12 girls against each other in a battle to the death. For the winner: fame and fortune. The other twenty-three competitors leave in body bags.

It’s a particularly repugnant society that could let such barbarism take place, and Panem is worse than repugnant. Ever since the Capitol won a civil war many years ago, it has ruled its twelve Districts with an iron fist. Movement between districts is utterly impossible, food strictly rationed. Any sign of rebellion is punishable with death. And the jewel in the crown of their control, the very demonstration of power and means by which it is exerted, lies in The Hunger Games.

Katniss Everdeen is sixteen-year-old growing up in District 12, a poor coal-mining area of the Appalachians. Her father was killed in a mining accident when she was just a child and ever since then her mother has suffered bouts of depression. For years she has supported the family, hunting illegally outside the electrified fences and learning to take care of herself. She is tough and skilled and absolutely terrified that her name will be selected to compete in The Hunger Games. But there is one thing she fears even more than certain death…

Combining commentary on the exploitation of Big Brother-style reality television with political angst, teenage defiance, and tonnes of action adventure violence, The Hunger Games is as exciting as reading gets. Katniss and the other characters are utterly beguiling, their situation the stuff of nightmares. One cannot remain emotionally uninvolved or neutral. There are spectacular costumes that dazzle with subtle messages of defiance, people willing to spend all they have to keep their competitors alive. There can have been few societies – either in history or fiction – whose moral bankruptcy is so extensive as the wealthy and materialistic Capitol's. The eagerness with which they consume The Hunger Games is truly gruesome. They get bored if there aren't enough deaths, gamble on the fate of the competitors, tune in to 'round-up' shows that show the days dramatic battles. There is something of the Colosseum blood-lust to their viewing, but mixed with detached indifference. There is a gap between everyday reality and the movie style 'reality' of the TV.

I love the slightly disturbing direction that Young Adult fiction has taken in the past decade or so. Earlier this week I finally got around to reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and became aware of how adeptly this type of book can distil complex situations into emotionally involving portrayals of common humanity. The visceral reaction they produce reminds us that sometimes there really things which are just morally wrong.

The Hunger Games is one of them. If it weren’t for the breathless pace of the plot that keeps the pages being turned, one might cast the book away in disgust. Yet the violence, though ever present, is not gratuitous and always couched within a healthy sense of disgust for what is happening. It is humanity that shines through strongest, simple friendship developed in extraordinary situations.

The Hunger Games is a swashbuckling action-packed adventure guaranteed to engross readers of all ages. The prose doesn’t shine, the premise shamelessly derivative (Battle Royale anyone?), the plot twists largely predictable. But sometimes that just doesn’t matter. If you are looking for a quick and involving escapist read then they don’t get much better than this.

Edition shown: US edition, Scholastic Press, September 2008, ISBN: 9780439023481, 384 pp

Current UK edition: Scholastic Books, January 2009, ISBN: 9781407109084, 464 pp

7.5 out of 10

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness

This review first appeared on Vulpes Libris where I write a guest review on the first wednesday of every month.

Read: July 2009

The Knife of Never Letting Go in one Tweet-sized chunk:
The Knife of Never Letting Go is a frantic, hair-raising, terrifying, complex, heartbreaking, exhilarating, novel.

“But a knife ain’t just a thing, is it? It’s a choice, it’s something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don’t. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.”

Public Health Warning:
This book contains probably the most horrific event I have ever read. Having swept through the first two thirds in a frenzy of enjoyment I was so traumatised that I threw the book across the room and had to be persuaded like a petulant toddler to pick it back up and finish.

Additional Public Health Warning:
Read this book. Health is about so much more than simply avoiding trauma and ill health. It is about promoting good health and that comes in many forms. The Knife of Never Letting Go may have cut me to the quick at times, but I still came away from it hungry for more. Everything about it, even those parts I really wished weren’t there, contributed to one of the most rewarding and exciting reads I have had in months.

But on to the book itself.

Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown. But Prentisstown is a town like no other. There are no women, only men. And everyone can hear everything that everyone else is thinking in a constant and never-ending stream of Noise. There is no such thing as silence. No such thing as privacy. And until he becomes a man there are secrets which the rest of the town is keeping from him.

It is no wonder he is a so pissed off.

Then one day Todd and his dog Manchee stumble upon a hole in the Noise, a spot of absolute silence. The silence of a girl.

But that is impossible. There are no women left on New World. Unless everyone has been lying to him. And if that is the case, he is in danger. While Todd, Manchee, and the girl flee across New World in search of safety and answers, the men of Prentisstown are preparing for war...

 

The Knife of Never Letting Go is a frantic, hair-raising, terrifying, complex, heartbreaking, exhilarating, novel. It combines the pace and excitement of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, the invention, intelligence of quality of writing of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and the moral ambiguity of Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines. It is a great book.

It is always difficult to write a good review of a book you love – the tendency to overuse hyperbole, bore the reader with irrelevance, or fail to view it all with a critical eye – but when that book is as multi faceted as The Knife of Never Letting Go it becomes doubly so. It would be so easy to compile a long bullet point list of all the diverse things I love about it, yet drawing them together as Patrick Ness does is far harder. His skill is in telling a poignant and intellectually rewarding tale which remains utterly unputdownable. The Chaos Walking trilogy, of which this is the first book, is packed with political intrigue, social commentary and thoughtful set pieces. Above all, it is about growing up and finding your place in a world which is nothing like you have been told it was. Gender relations are a good example of this. Because only men's thoughts are audible in Noise, New World is racked by pretty horrendous inter gender tensions. But instead of the usual sloppy journalistic stereotyping of the 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' brigade, Patrick Ness actually explores what it is like to try and get to know someone whose background and communication style is different to your own. It takes time, and is a far cry from the fantasies he has grown up with, but as Todd gets to gets to know Viola, he comes to understand that despite the apparent differences, men and women are really not much different. There is a profound moment towards the end when this realisation hits him.

“And there, in that morning, in that new sunrise, I realize something.
I realize something important...
I know what she’s thinking...
I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none.
I know who she is.
I know Viola Eade.”

The Knife of Never Letting Go is crammed with similar Eureka passages where frenetic reading grinds to a halt as you stop and consider just how special it is to capture something so simply and with such little pretence. There is a whole secondary subtext to the plot itself which adds great depth to what is already a powerful work of imaginative fiction. Another glorious moment comes right at the heart of the novel, when they stumble into a sea of giant cows all thinking the same single word of Noise together, singing it to each other at different pitches so that it becomes a melody.

“They're singing Here. Calling it from one to another in their Noise.
Here I am.
Here we are.
Here we go.
Here is all that matters.
Here.
“It's-
Can I say?
It's like the song of a family where everything's always all right, it's a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it's a song that'll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.”

That is what this book is all about: multiplicity, uncertainty, the absence of a simple truth. The struggles always just around the corner, and the beauty which can be found in the simplest of moments. If you are looking for a book to get a teenage boy reading this might be it. Todd is a very strong and engaging male lead. His mindset is that of many teenagers, his reactions to his world familiar. In the course of the journey he is forced to think long and hard about such things as the dangers of carrying a knife, how to interact with women, how to control his emotions. The narrative is written from his point of view, in his own vernacular style which is easy to get into and fits his caustic yet kind persona perfectly. This is not a 'boy's book' though, any more than it is a book solely for teenagers. It is another great example of the crossover literature which is in such a healthy state at the moment. The Knife of Never Letting Go is a book which I struggle to imagine anyone not liking.

And the tragic event which gave rise to my Public Health Warning at the outset of this review is the moment that really makes it. It may be painful, almost unbearably so, but at that moment you know that this is no light fairy tale in which everything will turn out okay. Here is a novelist who has no qualms about testing his readers. At any moment he may kill off your favourite character, or make them do something thoroughly horrible. There is no good and evil, no black and white, just a whole lot of moral ambiguity and painful mistakes. That uncertainty makes for an unpredictable read in which nothing ever turns out quite as you expect it to.

And just when you think safety and comfort are within Todd's grasp they are snatched away and the book ends on a precipice. Chaos Walking is a trilogy to really get your teeth into. The Ask and the Answer is a fitting and even more ambiguous sequel and I can't wait until Monsters of Men, the final part in the Chaos Walking trilogy, is published in May 2010. 240 days and counting...

9.5 out of 10