Catching Fire: Suzanne Collins

After reading The Hunger Games, there was no possible way I’d pass up Catching Fire. And for the record, I’m going to be pulling out my hair until Mockingjay (third book in Hunger Games series) comes out in August. By the time it’s released, I’ll be bald.

Anyway, back to business.

With all the YA bestsellers I’ve been reading lately, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of them are series. That’s good news if you’re shopping around one book, hoping that it could possibly turn into more, but it makes reviewing them a little bit harder. One some level, Catching Fire was popular because of its equally popular predecessor, but it could have just as easily bombed out.

Of course, this wasn’t the case with Catching Fire. And just like before, it was a bestseller because of its continuing high stakes.

Here was how Collins did it:

1. You’d think that the main characters were in the clear after winning the Hunger Games, but they were not.
2. The Capitol decides on an All-Stars style of the Hunger Games where winners of previous years fight to the death, throwing the two main characters back in the ring
3. It’s not enough that the main characters have to fight to stay alive, but now they have to worry about the safety of their loved ones while districts revolt.

I think it was easy to see in Catching Fire that Suzanne Collins expanded the stakes from a personal level (just the main characters) to include the community (immediate family or family and friends). I suspect that in Mockinjay, the high stakes will ripple out to include the entire world, so to speak, in the grand finale.

For series writers or those that want their novel to metamorphosis into other books, Catching Fire is a good example that we should be thinking of making the problems bigger and the conflict thicker for our original characters without forgetting about raising the emotional stakes, such as throwing their loved ones right in the boiling pot with them.