A young man is unfairly thrust into a battle for the death with other teens, where he enters into a plot to break the arena to show the Capitol that he won’t die easily.

While the writing was good and the character of Haymitch was interesting, I was a little disappointed with this book and the way it progressed. The reaping was a very different take compared to what happened to Katniss, and it was a neat way showing how things have changed in the twenty-five years between them, how violent the Capitol was up front, instead of giving more of a show. I was less impressed with the rebellion plot and the name-dropping. I have trouble believing that so many of the victors we see in Catching Fire show up here in prominent positions. I would think it made more sense that Haymitch got to know them gradually as he returned to the Capitol year after year. After what happens here, I wouldn’t expect the hostile relationship he has with Effie, since they are on such good terms. I also never got the sense that Haymitch was such a rebel when he mentored Katniss. Here, he embraces it fully, but it seems that nothing has progressed in the quarter century in-between. It made no sense to me and fully detracted from the story. My other big problem with this book is that the gamemakers killed close to half the tributes, instead of allowing a fight to the death after the initial offscreen bloodbath. Having double the number of tributes makes no sense if they were just going to kill them without employing the spirit of the Games. On the other hand, I did like the other District 12 tributes, especially the very strange Lou Lou. All of them were given depth and Haymitch misjudged most of them.

This book reminded me more of Mockingjay than The Hunger Games. It was lacking in a lot of things that made me love the first two books.

As with Mockingjay, there was a lot to like about this book. Unfortunately, there was a lot that I also didn’t like, such as incomprehensible name-dropping, the lack of conflict in the arena, and Haymitch’s role as a rebel, especially since nothing seems to have happened to the rebellion in twenty five years.

As in The Hunger Games, we get to see Haymitch’s morning as he prepares for the reaping. As a sixteen year old boy, he tries to shuck his chores like filling the cistern in the hopes of seeing his girlfriend. I thought it was strange that he likes to do the same sorts of things that Katniss liked to do, and even hung out with her father in the woods, though he isn’t a hunter. He chops wood and collects bottles for an illegal white liquor operation, though he doesn’t drink, himself –something I figure he developed after his experience in the games.

The reaping itself was a mess, and in a good way. It shows an edginess that makes it feel like we are witnessing something less polished, less evolved in a way, before they perfected the games as we know them. This being the second quarter quell, we already knew from Catching Fire that there would be twice as many tributes (incidentally, I don’t recall the horrible idea in the first quarter quell that forced the districts to choose their own tributes!). When the second boy is chosen, he tries to make a run for it, but is shot in the head, and in the ensuring chaos, Haymitch is selected to replace him, only because he went to try and rescue his love from the Peacekeepers. It shows how ruthless the Capitol is, and reinforces his hatred of them.

Lenore Dove, a Covey girl whom Haymitch loves, is obviously meant to be similar to Lucy Gray from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It’s a strange love, because from his thoughts it seemed like he was much more in love with her than she was with him. But when she calls him during the lead-up to the games, she’s frantic with love, and their relationship seems to grow stronger in his mind as the story progresses.

The other tributes are Maysilee, who is a snobbish rich (for District 12) girl, Wyatt, whom Haymitch and the others scorn because his father runs a Games betting ring and he knows all the odds, and Louella, who Haymitch calls his sweetheart, though I can’t remember why, given how much he says he loves Lenore Done (who always annoyingly gets called by her two names). Each one of these shows Haymitch how they are just kids and deserving of respect regardless of how they act back in the Districts.

I found the name-dropping in the middle part of the book to be a bit much. Because District 12 hasn’t had a victor since Lucy Gray, their tributes are assigned two recent victors from other Districts –and they turn out to be Wiress and Mags! This was more of a shock than anything, because while in Catching Fire he says they are good people, there is no sense that they’ve known each other for twenty five years, or that they were so instrumental to his time prepping the arena. When his stylist doesn’t show up, it turns out that a young Effie is a wannabe and takes on the job. I had no sense that Haymitch and Effie had ever met before, nor that he had any fondness for her, and her inclusion felt very forced. We also get Beetee, who apparently has been planning to destroy the arena for twenty five years! Given his lack of success in the Catching Fire arena, where Katniss had to shoot out the forcefield instead, I have trouble such a genius couldn’t have formulated a better plan after all this time.

In the Capitol, we get Cesar Flickerman, still doing the exact same job –he isn’t burned out, or got burned in the intervening quarter century? Again, I never got the sense that he was about fifty years old in The Hunger Games, and his appearance isn’t necessary. But I did like Plutarch’s inclusion, as he tries to showcase the Games in propos and posters and getting its best shots. Unfortunately, showing him as a rebel even back then, instead of somebody who believes and is then disenchanted, makes him also seem weak, as he’s done absolutely nothing with it for twenty-five years.

The most shocking bit of the book, and one that I was lukewarm about until they get inside the games, was the death and subsequent resurrection of Louella. She’s killed in a mishap during the chariot parade, and Snow introduces a body double to Haymitch as the real thing, insisting that he keep up the charade, even though it turns out she was taken from District 11 at some time, drugged and coerced into pretending she’s Louella. They call her Lou Lou.

Training goes about as expected, though Maysilee spends more time crafting tokens for everybody, which turns independents into allies. They take on the terrible name the Newcomers, as competition to the Careers. The Games would be highly polarized, and I wondered how they would turn on each other when the games started.

It turns out that they didn’t have to, as the author kills most of the tributes off-screen. It’s predictable and realistic that the Careers would kill far more Newcomers than the other way around in the bloodbath. But almost half of the remaining tributes are killed by a volcano eruption or by mutts specifically targeted to them, something Haymitch witnesses several times. He only had to kill once, at which he calls himself a killer.

His motivation during the entire games is to enact Beetee’s plan, as enacted by Beetee's son Ampert (love the name from a scientist!). It’s good that he was so centered on the mission, but that gives him an easy out during the games. He’s playing against the Gamemakers and the Games, rather than the other tributes. He berates himself for abandoning the others, but his mission is to make a statement, something he should know they would never air on television.

I don’t recall how much of his Games we saw in Catching Fire, but he finds the edge forcefield because he’s searching for a backup generator after he floods the sublevel where the central computer is held, causing the arena to do strange things but not breaking it as was his intention.

The arena is a beautiful meadow and forest; of the four Games we’ve seen, three of them are now closer to District 12 than desert or aquatic, which would have been more interesting. Lucy Gray won in an enclosed sports arena, which at least provided something different. The twist in this one was that everything is poisonous, from the water to the food, and the animals are all mutts, from killer butterflies to ravenous squirrels and deer with spikes on their hooves. Lou Lou succumbs to poison pollen, while Wyatt dies offscreen protecting her.

Maysilee survives the longest. She, like Haymitch, has a hatred of the Capitol, though we don’t really get a sense of why it matters to them personally, except that they’ve been reaped. The hatred seems to have deeper meaning that we are never exposed to. She and Haymitch find the forcefield that bounces things back, but exiting the hedge maze that borders it, she’s attacked by birds that peck away all her flesh.

Haymitch then goes in search of the one remaining Newcomers, but fails to protect her against the last Career. He uses the forcefield’s effects to send her axe back at the girl, killing her and becoming the victor.

In the last part of the book, we see Haymitch’s homecoming, and this feels realistic as well. I was confused at the Capitol’s reaction, though. It seemed like they were doing everything possible to ensure he was the Victor, but then they treat him like scum. What was Snow trying to do? I believe he was trying to keep his promise about dying a gruesome death, but wanted to torture Haymitch like he did Beetee, having him live while those he loved died.

His family’s house is burned with them alive inside (it’s impossible he was to blame for the cistern being empty –did they go without water for the week or more that he was in the Games?). In the meadow, Lenore Dove is released from the Peacekeepers only to pick up poisoned gumdrops (thinking they were from Haymitch), and dies in his arms. He takes to drinking, only to be roused for the Victory Tour. Beetee, Mags and Wiress have been tortured, which is I guess how they end up like they are for Catching Fire, though it would have been more realistic if they’d been turned that way because of a quarter century of being given to the Capitol’s rich as is implied by Finnick in Mockingjay.

It’s unfortunate that so much of the book was distracting trying to figure out how the people, Haymitch in particular, turned into the characters we know and love later on. It looks like everyone should be much older in The Hunger Games, and the rebellion seems to have stalled until Katniss comes along. Either Haymitch has completely given up on the rebellion in the intervening years or he’s been training tributes to further the rebellion –which I don’t believe given how he treats Katniss and Peeta on the train. I get that he’s probably been disillusioned in the intervening time, but wonder if he’s been looking for a spark. Wouldn’t he then have directed Katniss to do something rash, given her attitude and her high score during the evaluation?

While the story was interesting, it feels more like it was shoehorning in issues that might not have existed at that time. My favorite parts were showing how things can change in twenty-five years, while the most disappointing ones were how things that should have changed remained static.