Seriously? I actually read this? Didn't I hate the last one?

Well, "hate" isn't really the right word for how I felt about it. As I explained in my review, just because it's a badly written book (ostensibly) for not-very-bright children doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading it. Its complete lack of merit as literature or science fiction shouldn't necessarily detract from its one great strength: compelling, easily digested story telling. As I said in my review, it's masturbatory.

So when I discovered the Kindle lending library and saw that I could borrow the book for free, and since the release of the movie had put thoughts of this book back in my mind, and since I had just read a book with a frustrating lack of page-turning-ness, I decided I might as well rub one out with this sequel. And, as sometimes is the case with masturbation, this one basically fizzled out.

It's still bad in all the ways that the original was bad, which I'll enumerate because it makes me feel educated and urbane: easily half of the sentences are fragments or run-ons; the main character has insane, unbelievable reactions to other characters and plot events; the world itself is nonsensical and drawn with crayon-broad strokes; and it's not even internally consistent. Just as a for-instance, there's a broad movement in the book where the main character believes she's under surveillance by the cartoonishly oppressive totalitarian government, so goes out of her way to travel to "safe" areas before discussing sensitive matters with other characters. But, inexplicably, sometimes she (or the author) just forgets to take this precaution, dishing out treasonous discourse that only pages earlier she had been terrified would get her family executed.

So, to reiterate: still bad in the ways that the original was bad. Unfortunately, it's not even good in the way that the original was good: it's just plain boring. The titular games don't even start until the last quarter of the book, and there's so much other extraneous noise taking place by that point that I didn't even particularly care about them. The entire first half of the book is just the main character prancing around for television cameras, pretending to be in love with Peeta to appease the absurd, third-grade rendering of a totalitarian state. Most of the action is about her discovering a resistance movement to said state, but like that state it's so poorly conceived that it's impossible to take seriously. At least in the first book, when she was fighting for survival most of the story, there was a sense of genuine danger and movement to carry the plot. In the sequel, that's entirely absent, and the book suffers for it.

I would read this only if you really liked the first book, and only then if (like me) you liked it at least partly because it made you feel superior to pick at its faults -- that's basically the only fun to be had here.