** 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. 
 Seriously. Everyone loves Katniss. 
 Everyone. 
 BONUS TIME! 
 This is disgustingly good. Prepare to have your mind blown.