After the amazing first Hunger Games book, I was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately it is nowhere near as good.
The book begins by tidying up the aftermath of the Hunger Games: life as a 'victor', the victory tour, and Katniss' re-uniting with Gale. All are given fairly boring treatment, with much of it in narrative summary, and missing the sense of urgency for revolution I was expecting from the ending of the first book. Katniss faffs around and Gale, supposedly the rebel, spends the whole novel working in the coal mines being a good little oppressed peon. It wasn't long before I was thinking the only way this book was going to be any good was if they got back into the arena.
Obviously Collins or her editor thought the same thing, and so we end up with basically the same novel but written worse this time. The new arena is reasonably interesting, but not enough to make it a great book. The ending is not bad, but we could have arrived at the same point if Katniss had decided to throw her lot in with Bonnie and Twill, saving us the mediocre plot re-hash.
Despite all that criticism I still quite enjoyed the book, and I hope the third one is a return to form.
3 stars.
I also thought this one was a dud - I read it, and will read the next one, but it was a weak book. I would have only given it 2 or less though, I don't think it was satisfactory.
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