Sunday, February 13, 2011

50 Book Challenge Nos. 1 & 2: Catching Fire & Mockingjay

I started off the new year with a little YA fiction: Catching Fire, the second book of the Hunger Games, and the closing volume of the trilogy, Mockingjay. Neither is as good as its predecessor, which required the protagonist to be constantly active and making choices with ethical and plot implications; here, Katniss is strangely reactive, and the reader is dragged into a morass of guerrilla warfare just as she is. The centrality of Katniss to the resistance movement (even as a mere symbol) seems shoehorned and awkward, and too much of the books' suspense revolves around which boy Katniss will pick. Recommended for completists and YA speculative fiction fanboys and -girls.
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