{"id":147,"date":"2011-01-14T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=147"},"modified":"2011-01-12T22:19:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T06:19:58","slug":"mark-reads-catching-fire-chapter-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/01\/mark-reads-catching-fire-chapter-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Catching Fire’: Chapter 20"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the twentieth chapter of Catching Fire<\/em>, Katpee, Finnick, and Mags continue to explore the arena. All they learn is that the Gamemakers have never been quite as fucked up as this. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Catching Fire<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably say this a few times before I get to the final chapter, but I am getting nervous because we are just barely starting the Games and the end of this book is just over 100 pages away. This is not good. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re either dealing with the most awful cliffhanger ever or something in these Games are going to eliminate all of the competition very quickly. Or both. Or\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.something else gets in the way? Or\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6ok, I have to stop thinking about this. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting distracted.<\/p>\n

Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take probably the only moment in this whole book to laugh.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I yell, hurling myself at Finnick, for surely he intends to make certain that Peeta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dead, to keep any hope of life from returning to him. Finnick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hand comes up and hits me so hard, so squarely in the chest that I go flying back into a nearby tree trunk. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m stunned for a moment, by the pain, by trying to regain my wind, as I see Finnick close off Peeta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nose again. From where I sit, I pull an arrow, whip the notch into place, and am about to let it fly when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m stopped by the sight of Finnick kissing Peeta. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so bizarre, even for Finnick, that I stay my hand. No, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not kissing him. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got Peeta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nose blocked off but his mouth tilted open, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blowing air into his lungs. I can see this, I can actually see Peeta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chest rising and falling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ok, seriously, 100% hilarious<\/strong>. Let me guess: If there is any one scene in this trilogy that inspired the most fanart, this is it. There have to be at least a couple trillion<\/em> pieces that represent Finnick and Peeta making out. PROVE ME RIGHT, GUYS<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
So Peeta isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dead. I mean, she couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have killed him off this soon, right? But this is almost worse for me. Now I am incredibly confused<\/em>. Why on earth did Finnick just save Peeta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life? Does he need him as an ally that badly? Maybe Peeta is hiding a secret that Katniss is unaware of and he actually does<\/em> need to stay alive. THIS IS WEIRD, RIGHT? Or maybe Finnick is tricking Katniss into a long con so he can kill HER by making her feel as if he is on her side? LOOK, I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T UNDERSTAND THIS.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153His lashes flutter open and his eyes meet mine. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Careful,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says weakly. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a force field up ahead.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
OH, PEETA. You are a heartbreaker, you!<\/p>\n
Ok, done smiling? Because the tone of the vast majority of this chapter is pretty much as bleak as the End of Times. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start with some paranoia. When Katniss volunteers to lead them to find a place to camp, Finnick actually agrees to let her do it.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, let her do it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He frowns at me. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You knew that force field was there, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you? Right at the last second? You started to give a warning.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I nod. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How did you know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh, no. I agree with Katniss that sharing this with him is a baaaaaaad idea. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not making it very subtle that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to get her to admit her secrets. Is that what he meant when he spoke to her at the Training Center? Or was he referring to something else? UGH I CANNOT FIGURE THIS OUT and I feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m right<\/em> there.<\/p>\n
Katniss makes up a lie about her reconstructed ear and being able to hear<\/em> the fence and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually a pretty good lie. So she leads the way through the thick jungle, using nuts to keep an eye on the force field, even though she can see it the whole time. She had to keep up appearances that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about hearing the field and not seeing it.<\/p>\n
After a few minutes I become aware of a smacking sound behind me and turn to see Mags peeling the shell off one of the nuts and popping it in her already-full mouth. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mags!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I cry. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Spit that out. It could be poisonous.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
She mumbles something and ignores me, licking her lips with apparent relish. I look to Finnick for help but he just laughs. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I guess we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find out,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
MAGS FOR PRESIDENT OF PANEM. RIGHT NOW. I love that she is in an arena of death and she STRAIGHT DOESN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T GIVE A FUCK. I cannot wait to see how she continues to not care and upstages everyone else. Seriously my favorite.<\/p>\n
After another hour of moving through the arena with no luck of finding water, Katniss decides she needs to climb up a tree to get a better vantage point of the entire place.<\/p>\n
As I cling to a stretch of trunk no wider than a sapling, swaying back and forth in the humid breeze, my suspicions are confirmed. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a reason we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn to the left, will never be able to. From this precarious vantage point, I can see the shape of the whole arena for the first time. A perfect circle. With a perfect wheel in the middle. The sky about the circumference of the jungle is tinged a uniform pink. And I think I can make out one or two of those wavy squares, chinks in the armor, Wiress and Beetee called them, because they reveal what was meant to be hidden and are therefore a weakness. Just to make absolutely sure, I shoot an arrow into the empty space above the tree line. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a spurt of light, a flash of real blue sky, and the arrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thrown back into the jungle. I climb down to give the others the bad news.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See, the Gamemakers are very, very intentional. I suspect that there is an awfully fucked up reason this arena is shaped like a perfect circle for a reason. What that is? I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even begin to guess. Even worse, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking over old reviews of this book and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even think of anything that might be a clue. Man, my sleuthing skills are seriously fucking terrible when it comes to fiction. OH WELL, MORE ENTERTAINING FOR YOU, RIGHT??<\/p>\n
The thing is, this arena fills me with far more dread than the last one. Maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because the context is different and maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because in the back of mind, I have a sinking sensation this arena was designed to kill Katniss. So when she volunteers to go find water while the rest stay back at a makeshift camp, all I could think was OH NOETRY. Bad idea.<\/p>\n
The sound of the cannon brings me to a halt. The initial bloodbath at the Cornucopia must be over. The death toll of the tributes is now available. I count the shots, each representing one dead victor. Eight. Not as many as last year. But it seems like more since I know most of their names.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, one third of them are already gone. It is worse that we know who they are, too, because now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sad to think who died in the initial slaughter. Katniss doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have much time to think about such things, because she notices a strange animal that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a cross between a rat and a possum nearby. After she kills it, she notices that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s muzzle is wet, giving the appearance that it (probably) just drank water. When she takes it back to camp and tells the others, Peeta gets busy being a total BAMF again:<\/p>\n
Peeta has another idea. He takes a cube of rodent meat, skewers it on the tip of a pointed stick, and lets it fall into the force field. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sharp sizzle and the stick flies back. The chunk of meat is blackened on the outside but well cooked inside. We give him a round of applause, then quickly stop, remembering where we are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
PEETA FOREVER. Ok, maybe earlier in this chapter wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the last time we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get to laugh. The visual in my head of them all clapping and then suddenly stopping is a nice touch by Collins. I think the fact that these people can do something as small as that speaks volumes to the new environment for this arena.<\/p>\n
That night, the anthem plays and we learn who perished during the opening mayhem:<\/p>\n
The man from District 5, the one Finnick took out with his trident, is the first to appear. That means that all the tributes in 1 through 4 are alive\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe four Careers, Beetee and Wiress, and of course, Mags and Finnick. The man from District 5 is followed by the male morphling from 6, Cecelia and Woof from 8, both from 9, the woman from 10, and Seeder from 11. The Capitol seal is back with a final bit of music and then the sky goes dark except for the moon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh no, Cecelia and Seeder. I for sure thought they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d still be alive. DAMN YOU, COLLINS. ::shakes fist::<\/p>\n
A sign of hope arrives not long after that, as the first gift from a sponsor floats down on a silver parachute. Peeta opens it up and finds a long, tube-like piece of metal that perplexes all four of them. Obviously, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no explanation for it provided, so they are all stumped. It takes Katniss relaxing, thinking of her home so far away, wondering if her family are ok, for the thought to trigger in her mind.<\/p>\n
I wrestle the thing from the ground and brush it clean. Cup my hand around the tapered end, concealing it, and look at the lip. Yes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen one of these before. On a cold, windy day long ago, when I was out in the woods with my father. Inserted snugly into a hole drilled in the side of a maple. A pathway for the sap to follow as it flowed into our bucket.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S A SPILE!!!!! Which means that there is water inside the goddamn trees.<\/em> And there are trees everywhere<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Oh, Haymitch, if this was your doing, BLESS YOUR HEART, SIR.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, Katniss is right. The trees around them are full of water. (Actually, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure if all of them are, as I imagine they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all designed that way, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really specified which ones have water in them.) Able to quench their thirst, the four of them agree to take shifts and sleep in the fantastic hut that Mags and Finnick have built. But unlike the first time Katniss was in the arena, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not much time to sleep in the Quarter Quell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arena.<\/p>\n
Instead I find myself jarred from sleep a few hours later by what seems to be the tolling of a bell. Bong! Bong!<\/em> It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not exactly like the one they ring in the Justice Building on New Year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s but close enough for me to recognize it. Peeta and Mags sleep through it, but Finnick has the same look of attentiveness I feel. The tolling stops.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I counted twelve,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says.<\/p>\n
I nod. Twelve. What does that signify? One ring for each district? Maybe. But why? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mean anything, do you think?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well, shit. A bell? Never has a bell been so creepy<\/em>. So maybe there is something that happens in this arena that coincides with something in each of the twelve districts, right? Or maybe. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an idea. It would be a pretty fucked up one, but<\/em> it would give a specific set of tributes an advantage.<\/p>\n
The only thing that appears is a lightning storm in the distance. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it. No sign as to what that bell means at all. An hour after this, the cannon goes off, another tribute having died.<\/p>\n
Moments after [the rain] stops, I see the fog sliding softly in the direction of the recent downpour. Just a reaction. Cool rain on the steaming ground<\/em>, I think. It continues to approach at a steady pace. Tendrils reach forward and then curl like fingers, as if they are pulling the rest behind them. As I watch, I feel the hairs on my neck begin to rise. Something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with this fog. The progression of the front line is too uniform to be natural. And if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not natural\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
A sickeningly sweet odor begins to invade my nostrils and I reach for the others, shouting for them to wake up.<\/p>\n
In the few seconds it takes to rouse them, I begin to blister.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the twentieth chapter of Catching Fire, Katpee, Finnick, and Mags continue to explore the arena. All they learn is that the Gamemakers have never been quite as fucked up as this. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,5],"tags":[32,28,33,24,27],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catching-fire","category-hunger-games","tag-catching-fire-2","tag-katniss-everdeen","tag-mark-reads-catching-fire","tag-mark-reads-the-hunger-games","tag-suzanne-collins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}