A Fiery Sequel

This week, I finished Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games, and the middle book of a trilogy. There are some people who compared the original book to Battle Royale, a Japanese novel written ten years prior. I can't comment on that, not being familiar with that other work. But this second book did call to mind a different similarity -- to The Empire Strikes Back.

See, The Hunger Games was a relatively self-contained book. There were threads to imply where the story would go if continued, but it seemed equally poised not to continue, like the original Star Wars. Then along came Catching Fire, a book that continued the story, but took it straight up to a cliffhanger, leaving nothing resolved at all.

That's not to say that the book was unsatisfying. Indeed, I found the first half of the book to be quite compelling, perhaps even more so than the first book. Things took a political turn in this second book, with the main character having to deal with the fallout of her actions in the first book. Because of what she's done, the whole society is on the brink of upheaval, and in particular, the lives of her family and friends are in danger.

But after this intriguing setup, author Suzanne Collins takes a bit of a misstep in my opinion, by making the second half of her book a retread of book one. Oh, you liked the arena battle concept of the first book? Well, here -- let's do it again! This puts her in a difficult position of having to innovate more clever things that the first book presented, and having to do it in a slimmer page count, as this only represents the back half of the book.

Now granted, there is a little more to it than that. Characters and plot points are being set up in a way I expect will be paid off in the final book. Nevertheless, I was disappointed that the book veered away from new territory to re-tread familiar ground. It was still interesting enough to easily pull me through to the final page, but didn't finish on as solid footing as it started out.

So in that respect -- not being better than the original -- I suppose Catching Fire isn't like The Empire Strikes Back. I'd rate this book a B+, which is to say it's really only a letdown by comparison. I'm still looking forward to the end of the trilogy, and will probably jump right into the final book next time I start reading.