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.
