Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collin

Catching Fire and Mockingjay, the second and the third (final) books inSuzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series are both fast reads.  I finished each in one day.  Katniss Everdeen once again has to fight for her life in another set of Gladiator-style games set up for the amusement of the sadistic president of a future empire.  Katniss’s courage inspires a bloody revolution for which she becomes the reluctant poster child.

As populations die, she wonders if the price of freedom is too great, and more ominously, if the leaders she supports are any less evil than the ones she opposes.  Peeta, the young man who fought to keep her alive in book one, tries to kill her; and her best friend Gale no longer seems to support her core beliefs.  Book three concludes with a surprise ending in which Katniss refuses to bend to the will of those who try to control her.