I read this book in one day. I can count on one hand the number of books I've read in one day. But I could not get enough of this one. I couSO. GOOD.
I read this book in one day. I can count on one hand the number of books I've read in one day. But I could not get enough of this one. I could not. It was SO. GOOD.
What has gotten into me? Who could have foreseen this bizarre turn of events?
IT WAS SO GOOD!
(A few days ago I was scoffing at the release of a fourth book. Now I can't wait to read it.)...more
Oh my god, so good, I cried. Was it laggy? Kinda. I put it down at the halfway mark and read a magazine. That's what cost it a star. But I fell so deeOh my god, so good, I cried. Was it laggy? Kinda. I put it down at the halfway mark and read a magazine. That's what cost it a star. But I fell so deeply in love with Eadlyn and her struggle and the pressure upon her, as the first female heir, as the first Illean woman expected to run her country, as a woman juggling her empowerment and unsure of what to do with it.
These books are hardly didactic social critiques with careful erudite nuance, but this book gets something right: the rise of empowerment in women and how overwhelming it is and how, in battling for even footing with men, women are still sacrificing their selves and their bodies. Eadlyn feels that she needs to sacrifice her femininity, for fear of being seen as weak; Illean women are socially subjugated, and (like in real life, yeah) femininity is second-class, something dirty, something worthless. Femininity is seen as a flaw. Gone are the days of rigid social castes but now that men have eased off their absolute power over the social system, women are left to clean up the mess they made. And when they can't step up to the plate? Then they're angry ungrateful feminazi bitches. Eadlyn is slapped in the face by constant accusations of being a "bitch" or "bossy" or "frigid" when what she is doing is asserting her dominance in the only way she feels she can.
It's the fear, isn't it? She is afraid of the people she has to lead. She is afraid of the pressure, afraid of disappointing her elders, and afraid of the social burden as the first ruling queen of Illea. She's afraid of being a woman in power.
I love that the covers are torn off this. That when a woman speaks loudly, she's a "bitch". When she refuses men's advances, she's "frigid". These words were never hurled at Maxon, but they're slung like mud at Eadlyn. Was Maxon criticized for stepping up to the plate as king? For working with his father? For speaking publicly, for dating multiple women, for being commanding and outspoken? Never. Because he was a man. And Eadlyn knows this. She knows that her ascension will be harder than the mens' before her. And she grabs it by the horns, because she is aware that this society is not "post-feminist". She is aware that just because women can marry who they want, and can be queen, doesn't mean that sexism is dead. In fact, it's flourishing. It's a wild beast set free.
Do I miss America? Hell yeah. She was a kick-ass narrator and I loved her. But now she's so wise and cool and serene, and I want to kiss her because she's so amazing. (view spoiler)[She was the one who made me cry. Her, and my fear that she might die and crush my heart and soul forever. Please don't die, America. I love you. (hide spoiler)]
The boys were lovely, varied, human and sweet. (Did I mention that I love Henri? Because I do.) And I like that the book wasn't really about them, or the Selection. It was about Eadlyn and her struggling to grow into her own skin. As for the relationships, I'd say that none of the Selected were even that important, because there was more value placed upon Eadlyn and her fearing being separated from her beloved twin. That tugged at the strings of my heart more strongly than some sweet thing that some kid who rents beaches utters in her ear. It felt real.
But who am I kidding? America and Maxon were the highlight of this. They are the highlight of this whole series. I love them, both of them, equally and wholly.
This was my fourth attempt at reading this book. I’m glad I took a final stab at it. It’s flawed, but holy fuck I wasn’t expecting it to utterly take This was my fourth attempt at reading this book. I’m glad I took a final stab at it. It’s flawed, but holy fuck I wasn’t expecting it to utterly take over my life. I’ll review it when I get home (really want to do a couple of paintings for this one) but boy was I wrong when I talked all that shit about it. Sorry, Pierce Brown! I’m Boo Boo the fool!...more
**spoiler alert** So I started rereading this with a promise to write a "very, very scholarly review" similar to the ones I wrote for Twilight and Wic**spoiler alert** So I started rereading this with a promise to write a "very, very scholarly review" similar to the ones I wrote for Twilight and Wicked Saints. But the thing is that, with those books, I genuinely had strong feelings; I was motivated to sit down and bang out a review that sizzled, paired with graphics and artwork and intertextual and historical analysis. Those reviews were written out of an actual desire to do them, not because I had nothing better to do.
The thing is this. This is the thing: I really don't care about this book anymore. The first time I read it, I got testy about it because, at that time in my life, when I was depressed and struggling to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning - or really at any time of day - getting fired up about books was a lifeline for me. It was feeling, and it was creative engagement when my own artistic well, which is so vitally important to me, was empty.
These days, things are kind of okay. Like, life's not exactly great, but it's fine. People who haven't known me for that long probably don't care about any of this shit, but I do feel the need to provide some context as to why I reviewed this book in a fit of rage, then deleted the review and replaced it with another rant, then promised a review that's never going to materialise. It's because, at this point in my life, I really don't feel the need to use books and misdirected internet anger just to feel something.
The verdict on this book is that I don't like it, and I never will. It's a series that I don't have ay desire to continue. My feelings did change, though, on this reread: I liked Laia as an everygirl heroine bravely struggling to survive in a hostile environment, and I saw potential in this story that I couldn't fathom before. It's yet another story that I think could have greatly benefitted from being reworked as an adult novel, but at the same time, I get why people like it for what it is. The world building is kind of thin and doesn't make a modicum sense as an allegory for Ancient Rome (seriously; this is not even remotely reflective of Rome, and it's weird to see it being touted as "Romanesque" when it's got nothing to do with it) but would I call it bad? Probably not. It is what it is. Given the clean, deft, emotive writing and the aforementioned potential, I'd definitely give Sabaa Tahir's work another try when she moves on to something else.
That's it. That's genuinely all I have. Cheers....more
Well, this was bloody brilliant. But what did I just read? Tension and telepathy and spaceships, and then romance that I actually gave a shit about (IWell, this was bloody brilliant. But what did I just read? Tension and telepathy and spaceships, and then romance that I actually gave a shit about (I know, right?) and then a giant twist - a twist so twisty that it's almost physically painful. A twist so twisty, you'll pull a muscle in your back.
This book is like those little sachets of Nutella you get as free samples with like a magazine or a packet of Ritz or something, in that it's empty caThis book is like those little sachets of Nutella you get as free samples with like a magazine or a packet of Ritz or something, in that it's empty calories lite but seriously delicious. It's really small and really bad for you and not really that satisfying but shit if you don't enjoy it. Because, no matter how superior you think your tastes are, you will enjoy this. Even just on a voyeuristic level. You just have to forget all of the stuff you know. Like, all of it. Forget what you learned in civics class and don't you dare remember even one page of that history textbook that your teacher shoved under your nose when you were eleven. Don't untangle those headphones; don't try to line up the yellow smarties. This book is a house of cards. Really cool to look at, but totally flimsy.
(And the controversy is such a shame. It's a shame that the creative minds behind this lovably fluffy duck-down are the sort to hurl expletives at honest, non-inflammatory reviewers via Twitter, which is literally the weakest way to attack someone, because were your reasons so flimsy that they wouldn't fill out more than 140 characters? Come on.)
Personal shitstorms aside, this book has about as much class and substance as its creators, but that's isn't to say that it didn't nicely pad out a two-hour train journey from Dundee to Glasgow. That commute, especially on a Friday lunchtime, is a snore. Add that to a tiny waif of a story with all of the addictive allure of crack and you've got two covers that you can turn in one single sitting.
I'm not going to lie to you and say that I didn't have preconceived notions about this one; I mean, come on. The social drama was embarrassing. Add that to a name like "America Singer" and you've got a character I'm expecting to hate. But the thing was that I totally didn't.
I have a bit of a problem with those who expect teen girls in YA books to behave like street-smart successful thirty-year-olds with enough life experience to be able to judge any situation with a clinical and businesslike edge. I know I wasn't like that when I was sixteen, and neither were you. When I was sixteen I fell in love with a supply teacher and thought that having chipped nail polish made me look edgy.
America is kind of like me. She's probably kind of like you, too. She's over-dramatic and foolishly optimistic and she gets swept up by a single kind action from a cute boy. So what? She's a teenage girl. She's also careful, restrained and compassionate. She doesn't swallow bullshit like it's Orange Julius. She's believable. I'm not usually a huge fan of the whole "I'm special because I'm plain" which this whole book does use as a giant smoke screen for its sexism: there's the inevitable conversation in which someone says that big groups of girls always means there's snarky bitching and tons of competition, which doesn't hang together at all if you look at what is perpetuating this competition. Cass gives us commentary on girls and their competitiveness without actually tackling the reasoning behind that, which is of course a society whose foundations rely on a lack of camaraderie between women and this idea that in terms of relationships, men come first.
Who is funding, perpetuating, and benefitting from the Selection? Maxon, who will gain a wife, and the king, who will solidify his dynasty. The queen is merely there for decoration; she says and does nothing of import. This book, had it not been the Nutella free sample of dystopia in which there's no greater peril than running out of bow tie pasta and having to resort to lasagne sheets, could have been a fantastic allegory for the way in which women compete and are punished for it, when in fact it is men and male benefactors specifically who both incite and perpetuate said competition. We are supposed to hate Celeste because she's our stereotypical heartless mean girl - and YA caters only to the insecurities of those who are visually plain, placing girls who wear lipstick into a terribly unflattering light and only exacerbating "types of girls" - when in fact Celeste and her desperation to climb the social ladder is a blinding example of what this patriarchal power imbalance between men and women has created in Cass's world. That is, the idea that male acceptance and male pleasure has infinitely greater value than that of women. This idea that men and romance comes first, and female friendships threaten that, and get her! Tackle her! Don't let that *hussy* steal your man! He's all that gives you value, remember?
Calling out "all my friends are guys, there's less drama because girls are bitches" gives me immense satisfaction. When I hear that self-important special snowflake shit it makes me want to hurl. Is that any way to speak about your fellow woman? Do you understand the waves that women can make when they work together?
This book is nowhere near as bad in this area as it could have been - but we weren't spared disapproving glances at Bariel's breasts or the constant commentary on Celeste and her ridiculously exaggerated competitive antics. Do me a favour and spare me another wasted concept, because there's no peril to this, and because there's no peril, the story has no weight. None of these girls are being forced to do this. There's monetary gain involved but America's family are not exactly begging for scraps, are they? Why on earth we're watching a middle-class girl agonize so deeply over a silly competition that she chose to enter is beyond me. What's further beyond me is the whole caste system, and why it's even in place, and why this book is a dystopia. This could have been a four-star read for me had it been set in a high fantasy world, maybe in a kingdom called Candy Land where everything was frivolous and silly with an undercurrent of darkness and social instability.
But let's look at the technicalities of this. We have a competition with no negative outcomes that everyone adores except the faceless "rebels" who lack any real presence and who are portrayed as nasty barbarians when in fact what they're rebelling against is fat cats sitting in a palace eating fruitcake while children in the lower castes starve. The prince for whom they're competing is hot and charming and sweet. Goddamn, nothing about this is dystopian. You might look at the poverty pointedly but is the poverty ever explored in any meaningful way? Is there ever any real commentary attached to it? No.
Jesus, just add some fucking peril to your dystopia. "But it's light and fluffy! It's not meant to be serious!" you say. Newsflash: dystopia is a really goddamn serious genre. Dystopia is a genre that is built around social commentary. Don't you dare come in and fluff up a genre that was created as a platform for authors to offer creative, intelligent critique and discourse on some of the most controversial and powerful social issues in the real world. Dystopia is a gift; dystopian stories can make us better people. This is not a dystopia. It is just silly.
Honestly? This book could have been so much more. It could have been powerful and groundbreaking. It's not like the writing was anything special (in some places, it's just plain bad. This book is filled with some of the most unnatural and stilted dialogue I have ever read) or that any of the characters, even those I liked (Maxon was an unexpected favourite of mine, even if he is a two-faced spineless dingbat), grabbed my attention enough to make me give a crap. It's just one big pile of wasted potential. And I am so suspicious of authors who say that they "write without agenda" because one cannot claim to do impossible things. Every single piece of writing in existence has agenda, big or small, powerful or menial. Don't say that you just wanted to write a little light-hearted dystopia that nobody should take too much to heart. Don't. Don't do that. Don't do what Lauren DeStefano did when she wrote about rape and polygamy and forced marriage and sex with thirteen year olds and then claimed that there was no social commentary behind it, and that she wasn't trying to say anything with her writing. The fuck?
Don't fuck with really serious issues and then try to wriggle out of readers' concern or curiosity by claiming that you "didn't mean anything by it". That's lazy and also sort of insulting.
All of that said, don't be too surprised by my three-star rating. I'm sorry, but I couldn't award less to a book that engrossed me so, and that was such guilty fun. I was absolutely hypnotized....more
**spoiler alert** [This just in: the movie adaptation, Mockingjay: Part 1, was absolutely outstanding. I've seen both of the other movies for this ser**spoiler alert** [This just in: the movie adaptation, Mockingjay: Part 1, was absolutely outstanding. I've seen both of the other movies for this series, and while I enjoyed them greatly, the third instalment was on another level entirely. It's one of the best movies I've seen in a very, very long time. Good job, movie people. You made a meh book into a stellar piece of cinema.]
Those two stars are for the last ten pages, which were absolutely outstanding. Probably the best ten pages of the series. The 380 pages before that, however, deserve nothing. The first 380 pages can kiss my ass.
This book was a fucking slog. I kid you not. This book tried me to the point of breaking. About halfway through, I was ready to feed the damn thing to my dog.
I'm not the biggest Hunger Games fan. Y'all know that. However, when I read Catching Fire, after its predecessor disappointed me, I was STOKED to read Mockingjay. Catching Fire was just fantastic. I really, really and truly enjoyed it.
Mockingjay was a bloodbath. If you're sensitive to pointless deaths and gratuitous violence, then this is not the book for you.
Actually, I like that word. Gratuitous. It describes this book perfectly. Everything in this book was gratuitous and over the top, from the wangst to the ridiculous romantic interludes in the middle of battle scenes, and from the candy-gore violence to the stupid, overly-disgusting deaths of several characters who did not need to die. There's also the writing, which is so overwrought - it's not even like the author took the sparseness of the first book and butchered it. It's like she took the sparseness, fed it to her dog, fed the dog to a crocodile, fed the crocodile to a Tyrannosaurus rex, cut the Tyrannosaurus rex up into steaks, sold the steaks in Soho to a cabaret dancer, A-bombed the cabaret dancer's house, collected the ashes, mixed them into fluorescent paint, and then splattered the paint all over the White House in D.C. Because we, as readers who have stuck by and read the entire series through, need an entire page of Creative Writing Class explanation on what the Hanging Tree song means. It's like in the first book, when we were constantly being told exactly what the dandelions represent. And in Catching Fire, when the meaning being the clock was spelled out in an "I AM SYMBOLISM" manner. Everything, from Katniss's clothes (which she's weirdly fixated with) to her circular, drier-than-Egyptian-sand inner monologues were painstakingly pored over to the point of ridiculousness. Yes. Ridiculousness. Shall I repeat that again? Ridiculousness.
One more time? No? Ridiculousness.
Ridiculousness.
Contrary to the masses, I love reading books where loads of lovable characters die in the final fight. I love going through that grief, feeling the torment of watching one of my beloved friends die a bloody death. In fact, in my own work, I have a death list. I kid you not. I literally have a list of the most beloved characters, and I've put stars in red pen against all those who die.
There are many red stars on that list.
But what I do not enjoy, and what I found far too much of in Mockingjay, are pointless deaths. Deaths that don't ensure anyone else's survival, are excessively undignified, or never grieved for. Finnick, Mesalla, Mitchell, Boggs, and Cinna all died ridiculous deaths that really did nothing to aid Katniss's bringing down the Capitol. Essentially, they were all just Mauve Shirts, and they had been all along. I mean, fine. If the author wanted to kill these characters, go ahead and do it. It's actually not the fact that the characters died that bothered me. Yes, I was absolutely distraught over the death of Finnick (he just married Annie! Annie was pregnant! What the fuck kind of sadist kills that?) but given the choice myself? I'd probably kill him too. But the way in which Finnick dies is nonsensical.
YA is a tricky field in which to write dystopian. True dystopian always deals with death. It always deals with untimely death, tragic lives and terrible situations in which people are abused and scarred, in any and every way. But YA is inspiring to young people. YA is a window to different ideologies and -isms held up by other people; for instance, Mockingjay is a clear message against war. But YA is also meant for a broad audience of a younger age, and that comes with a responsibility to instill a message that yes, will inspire, but coax some kind of hope out of readers. Some kind of desire to be a better person. Some kind of knowledge that there are wonderful things in the world worth salvaging, and weathering difficult patches in life will ultimately result in a brighter future.
This sounds idealistic, I know. But this series is shelved in Children's. Kids as young as 12 are picking these books up, and what are they finding? The world sucks. People suck. Give up, and stop caring, because nothing good will ever come of trying. Perseverance will get you nowhere. Suicide and alcoholism will make you feel better.
No.
Where is Katniss? Who's the drugged-up shadow that's replaced her? In Mockingjay, this fickle, doom-and-gloom girl is not the battleaxe we met in The Hunger Games. This Katniss is constantly waking up in hospital, taking drugs and completely losing the will to fight for the people she loves. Her voice is flat, drab, full of a whole lot of wangst surrounding the love triangle that, during the latter half of the book, became one of the very main concerns. What? I hear a lot of guff about this not being a romance, but it's quite clear that it is. And the scene in Tigris's cellar when Katniss pretends to sleep, but actually lies awake listening to Gale and Peeta talk about how they both love her unconditionally, and are perfectly fine to let her choose who she'll pick like a carton of juice off the shelf in the supermarket, and who she'll dump on his ass? Brought back some pretty pungent T-word memories. Gale and Peeta have absolutely no self-respect, and this scene was totally unrealistic. People do not behave like that in real life. Think about it: you're sitting facing the person who you know has been fooling around with the person you wholeheartedly love, and have done for years. The person you one day see yourself marrying. Are you really going to say, "Oh, I know how he/she feels about you. I know he/she has been making out with you behind my back, just after making out with me. I'm cool with that. I get it. No biggie." Don't even lie. I know that if I were Peeta or Gale, I'd be absolutely furious with Katniss. I'd demand to know why I was being toyed with, used even, and frankly? I'd walk away. I'd pick up my dignity and get out of there, because being treated like a piece of chewy candy in a pack of two that she can't decide whether or not to eat is an insult, and unspeakably degrading.
I kind of wanted Katniss to end up alone. Yes, once I'd forced myself to come to terms with the fact that that wasn't going to happen, I did enjoy the last ten pages greatly. Greatly. They were quite beautiful, actually, as long as I pushed myself to suck up everything I hated about the miserable and hopeless tone of this book. What I didn't enjoy was Gale's end. What happened to him? Oh, he's in District 2. And what's he doing in Distict 2? Dunno. How did he get there? Dunno. Why did he go there? Dunno. How does he feel about Katniss being with Peeta out of default, not either one's choice? Dunno. What's he going to do with his life now? Where is he going to live? What's going to happen to this character that we've been forced upon for almost three whole books, and 1200+ pages, and who's played a huge part in the story of Katniss's life?
Uh...I dunno.
I also couldn't believe Katniss's trial just happened without us. What the heck? Katniss is moping and plotting her suicide gratuitously in her room in the Capitol, and then one day Haymitch wanders in and says, "Your trial's over. You're free as a bird."
Yes, Katniss is free as a bird. She goes home and lives out the rest of her days as she pleases (and her mother just buggers off too, like Gale did. Where's your mom, Katniss? "Oh, somewhere.").
This whole thing felt like a sputtering fizzle-out of what really should have been a fantastic series. Part way through Catching Fire, I was considering that this series may even be literary, but Mockingjay spat on that. This is commercial YA, through and through. Yeah, the strong message about war and the hopelessness of Katniss tries to cover it up, but it has everything: silly love triangle, cackling villain, and the fate of the world resting on a teenager's shoulders. What's that? Oh, yeah. This is silly. Silly.
Katniss's Mockingjay role was equally silly. One minute Katniss is insisting, "I'M THE MOCKINGJAY BITCH!" and then the next, she says that she just doesn't care about it. She doesn't care about the Mockingjay, or all the stupid TV spots they do, or anything really. And then BAM!
"I'M THE MOCKINGJAY BITCH!"
Katniss got on my nerves here. As did her constant use of arrows in futuristic combat. What is that? Since when was there an explosive that could fit on the head of an arrow and blow up an entire airship?
Why am I even trying to reason this?
The bow and arrows did not have a place in the world of Mockingjay. It seemed overwhelmingly stupid for Katniss to still be using arrows, a prehistoric weapon, when everyone else around her was using firearms and bombs. There's also the "sheath" business, which is just ridiculous. It literally takes 0.40 seconds to Google "bow and arrows" and find that arrows are held in a quiver. See? Simple!
The writing in this book irritated me. The first hundred pages are almost comically boring, and the prose suffers under nonsensical fragments, run-on sentences and huge internal monologues in the middle of conversations. It's just damn hard to read.
Mockingjay was such a flop for me. While the idea of exploring PTSD in war veterans was very interesting, it was employed in such a way that it brought the narrative in this book to a painful grind. There was absolutely no hope left within Katniss, and her complete derailment just destroyed any hope left in the message of this book. The writing was irritating, the deaths pointless, the violence totally over-the-top.
**spoiler alert** Is it just me, or is anyone else really starting to like Haymitch?
Bet you didn't see this coming. Moi, Kira, reading Catching Fire a**spoiler alert** Is it just me, or is anyone else really starting to like Haymitch?
Bet you didn't see this coming. Moi, Kira, reading Catching Fire and giving it four stars!
The Hunger Games earned an uneasy 2.5 stars from me. The most annoying part? I wasn't 100% sure why. Katniss, probably. The almost absurd seriousness of her voice and her behavior toward Peeta tipped me (though I did have to give her kudos for being absolutely kick-ass). The cavalier treatment of Haymitch's alcoholism, the total lack of sensical world-building and the sentence fragments grated on me. I enjoyed it, yes; but love it, I did not.
I was all set to throw in the towel with this series. It's been a year since I read The Hunger Games, and I wasn't on any kind of tenterhook to find out what happened next. I'll admit, when I picked up Catching Fire it was with a sort of do-I-have-to groan, because it was practically thrust into my hand by a friend who is totally batshit crazy about these books and demanded I keep reading or die. So I cracked it open on pain of death and started reading.
The first seventy or so pages are ridiculously boring. Katniss and Peeta literally do nothing but travel around and eat. It was during this time, when there was no violence or gratuitous nudity or mildly sexual romantic tension to distract me, that those absolutely heinous sentence fragments really caught up with me.
Look, this book is obviously intended to be written as a stream of Katniss's consciousness, so I absolutely understand an abundance of fragments. But these fragments are nonsensical. I literally had to read some sentences five times just to understand what Katniss was trying to say, and let me tell you one thing: that's a fantastic way to totally alienate your reader from the narrative. The fragments would cut a perfectly comprehensible sentence into two incomprehensible halves.
Welcome to Logicville. Population: none.
So why'd I give this book four stars? Because I read it in something like two and a half days, and although the plotline felt repetitive, half-hearted and sort of a caper, it was just great. So much better than the first book. Let me say something: Suzanne Collins must be a brilliant dressmaker, because she has an uncanny talent for embellishing obnoxious things and making them seem 100% less ridiculous than they actually are.
This is the plot of this book. Katniss and Peeta hear rumblings of uprising among the Districts, meanwhile President Snow, for some strange reason, is still not satisfied with Katniss's show of fake love for Peeta (even though EVERYONE else - literally EVERYONE - is. Like, how much more convinced does he think the people need to be?). So this creates a lot of unnecessary conflict, while Katniss bounces between Gale and Peeta, even though she knows herself that she's not sexually attracted to Gale and at this point the reader is already fully aware that in the end, she's going to pick Peeta. How could she not? He practically has "I am a non-threatening love interest" tattooed across his forehead. This series is a lot of things, but unpredictable it is not.
So anyway, a Quarter Quell is announced, in which a male and female tribute from each District will be selected from the existing pool of victors, ergo, the folks who won will be in the arena again (and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes this book fucking great. The feeling of sheer betrayal from the Capitol's decision to haunt the victors with another Hunger Games is what carries this whole book). Yadda yadda, lots of violence, and then a bad guy turns out to be good and Katniss and Co. are all rescued from the arena, save for Peeta, who's been horribly abducted by the Capitol (tears for that).
Let's start with the love triangle, which this book pretty frequently relies on to supply tension. I've been pretty hard on the love triangle, but I really shouldn't have been: it doesn't convince me at all and to be honest I never felt any chemistry between Katniss and Gale or Katniss and Peeta, but at least it didn't feel tacked on. It felt premeditated and it does forward the plot, so kudos for that. Plus, the Katniss in this book is much more human, a Katniss I could better relate to. She's tough but emotional, self-assured yet apologetic, compassionate but practical. Her voice held a little note of sarcasm which I just loved, because I always felt that the maudlin narrative of the first book really did border on angsty and I can't deal with that shit. You feel me?
I better felt who Katniss was in this book, and as such, I felt like I could grow to care about Peeta and Gale as characters, though not as love interests - like I said before, I could've cared less who Katniss ended up with because none of the romantic relationships ever really interested me. Note that it is true what they say, that Gale and Peeta are practically the same character, except Gale tends to be irritatingly convenient in his reactions and tends to jump to the most nonsensical conclusions, so I do tend to prefer Peeta. I don't know what it is; Peeta's just lovely. And he's a little clumsy and awkward, which I find incredibly endearing.
Catching Fire sees Katniss and Peeta forced to participate in a second round of the Hunger Games. It's a Quarter Quell, which occurs every twenty-five years, and means the Gamemakers toss in a curveball to freak everyone the fuck out.
These Games were nowhere near as threatening as those in The Hunger Games. That was mainly what warmed me to the first book: the terror of entering the arena blind, unsure of what was going to happen next. In this book, the reaping happens in one paragraph, there are two pages of meals and dresses, and then they're straight into a particularly creative arena which was thrilling, but not frightening. My problem with these Games was that everything felt like it was moving very slowly. After the gong sounds, there wasn't the jump of the heart that occurred with Katniss's first Games. There was just Katniss falling, Katniss running, Katniss swimming, Katniss doing this and that. After she reaches the Cornucopia, there's time for some witty dialogue between her and the unspeakably fabulous Finnick Odair, and then they mosey on over to Peeta, pick their weapons with strategy, then wander into the jungle. Urgency? Oh, please.
So why was this book such a success, in comparison to the previous and more tense installment? Well, because the character development in this book is far superior to that of first one, in that each character feels more complex, each exchange of dialogue feels more natural, and somehow, for some reason, Peeta and Gale began to actually interest me as separate people in their own right. They felt necessary, like humans rather than big cardboard cut-outs of Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson*. In the first book, all of the characters go through the entire book without changing at all by the end. Katniss was already a hunter, Peeta was already a baker and painter, and Gale was already brooding and angsty. By the end of the games, nothing inside the characters had really changed. Katniss was still a hunter, Peeta was still a wet rag, and Gale...blah. Who cared about Gale at the end of the first book? Whatever. There wasn't a single character arc to be found. Just people doing stuff and that stuff causing other stuff.
So while The Hunger Games excelled in candy gore and adrenaline-charged action, this book has more substance. I felt like it mattered.
*Don't flame me, you little bitches. I read the book like a year before the movie came out, okay?
In essence, I felt like a lot of this book was kind of a caper. Well, maybe not quite a caper, but it was more like an adventure novel than a terrifying thriller. I loved the twists, especially Plutarch Heavensbee, which I did not see coming, not for a second. There was a lot of clothing description, which was great fun (hurrah for Katniss's mockingjay outfit! That was dope) and while a lot of the arena time felt sort of Tomb Raider-esque, it was wildly entertaining. That's the essence of Collins' writing, at least for me. Technically, it's kind of lame, but she knows how to put across a story with just enough heart to convince the reader to give a shit.
Despite the somewhat sweet-shoppish atmosphere of the Games, there were plenty of darker areas to this book. The Capitol's killing gentle Cinna, Katniss's hopeless entrapment in the Quarter Quell, Mags's death in the arena, the morphlings, Finnick's love for Annie and, most pungently for me, the glimpse of Haymitch's time in the arena. It was sickening, really; to throw back to teenage Haymitch, his connection with Maysilee, and his victory in the games after a disgustingly bloody battle with his final opponent. Guys, his intestines were literally hanging out and the girl was killed with an axe to the head. How anyone can still not like Haymitch after this is beyond me. This is the reasoning behind his alcoholism, his anti-social personality, and eventually (view spoiler)[his rebellion as he collaborates with Plutarch Heavensbee to get Katniss out of the arena and into District 13 (hide spoiler)]. Oddly, Katniss was one of the very people who expressed no sympathy whatsoever for Haymitch, despite witnessing his disturbingly awful stint in the arena when there were twice as many tributes as usual (Haymitch competed in the 2nd Quarter Quell). She's horribly judgmental, and apathetic toward him, and frankly, it left me irritated.
I may be the only person on the planet who actually likes Haymitch, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Needless to say, I absolutely fell in love with Finnick. Do I even need to say why? Nah. No need. It's Finnick. That's why I fell in love with him. Because he's Finnick.
The cliffhanger at the end of this book bothers me. I suppose it's that ingrained disgust for cliffhangers their sneaky little money-grubbing ploys, and the creepy marketing strategies behind them. You're literally trapping people into buying the next book. How about relying on the actual quality of the story to invite in readers for the next book in the series, rather than inadvertently begging them to line up at midnight for the release? It's just really, really jammy.
For shame, Scholastic.
P.S. The blurb for this book is a lie. Gale does not have an icy exterior, and Peeta does not, at any point, ever, turn his back on Katniss. Nobody ever turns their back on Katniss. They all love her too much.
I unexpectedly LOVED this one, up until the last eight pages, which were bullshit.
(Also the whole nuclear thing annoyed me because that's just not howI unexpectedly LOVED this one, up until the last eight pages, which were bullshit.
(Also the whole nuclear thing annoyed me because that's just not how spacecraft engines work, but I was enjoying the story so much that the science fails washed over me.)
**spoiler alert** Of late, we've seen the YA dystopia trend grow to dizzying heights. Many like to bleat that every post-apocalyptic adventure publish**spoiler alert** Of late, we've seen the YA dystopia trend grow to dizzying heights. Many like to bleat that every post-apocalyptic adventure published within the last year is trying to grab the success of The Hunger Games, just as we've all assumed that authors of YA paranormal romance are trying to jump on the Meyer bandwagon. We're being conditioned to accuse every dystopian author of being a scammer, and every book (before we've even read it and discovered that no, it doesn't have anything to do with Collin's already derivative plot) of being a loserific rip-off.
Those who believe this: stop. Because I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that this book is better than The Hunger Games.
First of all; the world-building is spectacular. It's all related to an issue we face right now: pro-life vs. pro-choice. Being a Wendy Davis fangirl, this book disturbed and touched me on a very deep personal level. It literally changed my life.
Let me elaborate.
So: America. The so-called "Heartland War" was fought by pro-choice and pro-life armies as each sought to obliterate the other. What's left is a compromise dictating that human life cannot be touched before adolescence, but between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a child can be "unwound"; a process by which the child is split apart and all organs (99.44% of the body must be used) are saved as transplants for donors. Problem children are signed as Unwinds by parents at their wit's end, while tithes are born and raised to be unwound.
The premise didn't convince me at first. I couldn't buy it. I couldn't buy that people would sign off their children to be cut into pieces and scattered around like car parts. But that's the beauty of this book; while The Hunger Games never succeeded in convincing me, this book did. The farther I read, the more invested I became. It's electric, in every sense - the characters, the world, the premise, the writing. The way tithes were brainwashed became frustrating, just as the "terribles" became nauseatingly tragic. Yes, I'm talking about Roland, a troubled boy sentenced to unwinding by his mother even after he saved her from her violent husband. Written off and judged as dangerous, Roland was unwound at Happy Jack harvest camp (yes. Happy Jack. It gets sicker). The best part? We have front row seats to Roland's unwinding. The narrative continues and we find ourselves watching, helpless, as a team of doctors and nurses cut him into pieces. His fear leaps off the page.
Our first and main narrator is Connor, a troubled boy not unlike most of the kids I've known at high school. He's not particularly vicious, spiteful or difficult. He's just a teenage boy on a rough patch. But his parents are lazy and selfish, so they sign him up to be unwound. Connor won't stand for it, though; he finds the order and makes tracks in the middle of the night.
Risa is a ward of the state. Due to budget cuts (I kid you not) she is signed up to be unwound. At her tribunal, in which she's informed she'll be sent to a harvest camp, she's told that she isn't smart or talented enough to be kept alive.
Lev is a tithe, a child born and raised to be signed off as an Unwind as soon as he turns thirteen. His oldest brother is vehemently against the process, but his deeply religious parents have convinced Lev that being tithed is a great honor that he must follow through to the end.
The collision of these three characters is the start of this never-ending thrill ride that comes to a screaming stop only on the very last page. The last page is equally as rewarding, so never fear!
My point before, while I was still reading this, is thus: in recent YA and in general, men write better heroines than women. Why is this? Does this depress anyone else? Can we please start having some faith in our own gender, women, and stop letting male writers covet positive and proactive females?
Also, interestingly, the romance in Unwind, though light, was more convincing than anything I've read in YA lately. It brought me to tears twice, and only made me love both characters more. Why? I can't say. Perhaps it's because it never felt like a Romatic Plot Tumor, and it never felt forced. There was no "tightness in my chest" or "shimmering azure pools". It was two people, two desperate teenagers, knowing and accepting and appreciating each other.
Though who else thought Connor and Risa should have had the smex? Come on, people. If you're going to be slaughtered in a matter of days and your loved one is right there, all hot and yummy, wouldn't you want to have the smex? Yessir.
Anyway. The heroine? I loved her just as much as I loved Connor. You know what? Sometimes I loved her more. Risa is just alive, so filled with personality and integrity and intelligence. She's strong, capable, and entirely independent. Her final fate (along with Connor's) was a little bittersweet, but on the whole it fully satisfied me. Like, MAN, did it satisfy me. You know when you're really hungry, and then you scarf down a massive Montana's steak with 'shrooms and tomatoes and steak sauce and big fries with salt and vinegar? That's how satisfied I was. (I hope y'all are hungry now.)
Guise, my ONLY problem with this book lies in the writing. To begin with, I didn't like it. It took a while for me to get into the style of it, and the editing was squiffy as hell:
"Just because he's to be unwound does NOT means he's an Unwind." - page 31
"Smorgas-bash!!" - page 128
"This is a pawnshop isn't it?" (Missing comma) - page 158
"...but Hayden isn't done done yet." - page 172
As I said - this book is beautifully written, but I only came to appreciate this when I was about a quarter way in. I also don't like all-caps sentences in published works (save it for Tumblr, bbys) but once I got used to it, it really just stopped bothering me. And sure, the little blips above irritate me, but there are dozens of gloriously beautiful passages within Unwind that moved me and allowed me to easily forgive Shusterman for the slip-ups. Third person present tense is difficult to pull off, but Shusterman did. And hella kudos for that, broski!
Unwind isn't for the faint-hearted. It pushes a lot of very close-to-home questions that might make you squirm. What is the value of life? Does our society unfairly judge youth? Do we give up on troubled children too quickly? How can one profess to be "pro life" but then advocate killing grown humans (this is an EXTREMELY relevant question)? Is revenge ever justified? Can you justify cruel means to a kind end?
How far would you go to preserve your own life? What sacrifices would you make?
These questions are never explicitly answered by Unwind, and this is what makes this book such a legend. It never preaches, only teaches. It informs, but does not push opinions. It poses questions that are open to be answered by the reader, not the author. It is a very challenging read, but an incredibly rewarding one.
On the whole? This book is absolutely excellent. It's probably one of my favourite books of all time. I adore it. I adore the brilliant characters, the electric premise, the gorgeous writing and the wildly original premise. It's so full of heart. I admit it: I cried twice. I was shocked, disturbed, enlightened, amazed. It grabbed hold of me and drew me in from the first page. It's highly original, and basically, a triumph in every sense of the word.
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