Summerton is the most beautiful resort town in New Zealand, but since Keri’s older brother killed himself unexpectedly, she’s been even less enchanted with the town than usual. Then she talks to Janna and Sione, whose older brothers also killed themselves – without warning and without leaving a note. Sensing a pattern, the three of them start looking for a serial killer, but Summerton’s secrets may just be darker – and more supernatural – than they think.

The Shattering is not a book about magic. Oh sure, there’s magic in it, and that’s what sets the plot in motion. But at its heart, The Shattering is about things that are much more raw and real: the grieving process. Secrets. Bullying. The complicated ways we relate to the places we’re from. Summer flings. Friendship. In fact, for a significant chunk of the book I wasn’t 100% sure there was going to be any magic, and I wouldn’t have minded in the least if there hadn’t been, since everything else was handled so deftly – except that I wouldn’t have been able to tell you guys about it here.

I honestly don’t have a lot of deep thoughts to share about this book, but here’s a few salient points:

• It’s incredibly gripping – I picked it up while sitting by the pool on vacation in Florida, and the next time I looked up the sun was setting and it was time to get ready for dinner. It’s also a little creepifying – don’t read it right before bed, maybe.
  
• The characters are wonderfully complex and feel like real teenagers; even when they’re saying horrible things or being petty or cruel, they still read as decent, complicated people.
  
• As with Karen’s previous book, Guardian of the Dead, The Shattering is consciously diverse and explicitly addresses issues of race, gender, and sexuality throughout. It also draws strongly on its New Zealand setting and references Samoan and Maori traditions and culture. All of that is basically super great.
  
• It is, unsurprisingly, pretty sad – after all, it’s about three teenagers whose brothers have just died. I was in tears by the end, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
  
• Did I mention? It’s really freaking good.

While Guardian of the Dead was excellent, The Shattering is nearly flawless. My one teeny tiny quibble is that while the book spends a lot of time on its heterosexual love triangle, I would have liked to see Keri, who is gay, have at least a hint of a love life, even a one-sided one. Still, as she’s the primary narrator, she doesn’t exactly get short shrift, story-wise (and there is a mention of her dating at the very end).

All in all, The Shattering gets the full five cupcakes. Bring on the next book!

(Requisite disclaimer: Karen is a pal of mine. But honestly, I think I would have loved this book just as much if she were my mortal enemy. Well, maybe not just as much. But close to it!)

In the final book in the Healing Wars trilogy, all Nya wants is to search for her missing sister — until she learns that her home city of Geveg has rebelled against the Duke. Now the Duke is bringing his whole army to Geveg to retake control, or destroy it entirely. Seeing no other choice, Nya takes off to warn her people, only to quickly become embroiled in the rebellion itself. But is she really a symbol of hope, or is she only a pawn? And can she manage to be a hero?

General spoilers for the series after the cut:

Hey, look at me, actually reviewing a book for the first time in over six months! Disclaimer, I read this one in ARC form, and it was very kindly provided by the author. But I promise I’m not biased when I say that this book was awesome.

I won’t lie: I was a little bit wary going into it. I don’t know if it’s just my bad luck as a reader, or if there’s a problem endemic to YA, but at least four trilogies I’ve read in recent years have ended with fizzles rather than bangs, even when the first two and a half books have been great. So I am pleased to report: it does not fizzle! After spending two and a half books building up how evil the Duke is, building to a war, and building up Nya’s character, the conclusion shines where other books… uh, didn’t so much.

It probably isn’t fair to do a one-to-one comparison, but without naming any names (ahem) there was a trilogy that concluded last year where an impoverished teenage girl’s main goal was to save her little sister, and as she tried to accomplish that she became the symbol of a rebellion against an oppressive government. I bring this up because some of the pitfalls of that particular book are also elements in play in Darkfall, but here they turn out solidly. The stakes of the war are equally deadly here — terrible things happen, battles are lost, and people die. Some of it is even Nya’s fault. But even when bad things are happening, Nya never checks out; and even when she’s being used as a figurehead, she never loses her agency. She’s the one who decides to play along with questionable leaders, even when things don’t feel right, and then she has to deal with the consequences.

In my review of Blue Fire (the middle book in the series), I mentioned that I had a hard time tracking what happened at the climaxes in the first two books. That was actually not the case in this one — there was a heck of a lot of action happening near the end, but I never lost track of what was going on with Nya’s powers and the Duke’s weapons.

Aside from improving on what I found to be the previous book’s main weakness, the conclusion maintained all of its strengths: the worldbuilding is great, Nya’s voice is strong and she’s fun to read about, and the story is compelling. The only tiny quibble I had was that I don’t think we got to know one of the characters who died very well beforehand, so it didn’t have quite the impact it should have. That’s an extremely minor complaint, though. The book is a solid five cupcakes, leaving the series as a whole at four and a half.

After a perilous journey back to her homeland, Princess Raisa of the Fells must reclaim the throne that is hers by birthright. But her political opponents want her dead and her more malleable younger sister on the throne, and the Clans are ready to go to war to prevent that from happening. Raisa must figure out a way to live long enough to be crowned, quell civil war, and protect her queendom from the war that is raging just outside her borders.

Meanwhile, ex-thief-turned-wizard Hanson Allister has just learned that the girl he knew – and loved – as Rebecca is the princess he is sworn to protect…and the daughter of the queen he blames for the death of his family. It’s his job to keep her alive, but he’s no longer sure he even wants to.

Every single time I review a book by Chima I find myself saying “It was good but super long, dense, and slow.” Today, I am breaking the pattern. It was long. It was dense. But it was not the least bit slow. All eight billion pages of this book are packed with action, from Raisa’s bloody escape into the Fells to the end. I was on the edge of my seat to the very last page, biting my nails, waiting for disaster to strike.

Because this is the third book in a very complicated series, there’s not much I can say about it besides “It’s so good.” But seriously, it’s so good. The pace is thrilling, Raisa is a wonderful heroine – seriously badass and clearly a good future queen while also a relatable teenager – and the romance between Raisa and Han hooked me harder than any young adult novel since I was actually a young adult.

My biggest problem? This was an ARC (advance reader’s copy), so now I have to wait until Fall 2012 for the last book in the series. In the meantime, The Gray Wolf Throne gets five cupcakes, and a cherry on top.

[Rapunzel's Revenge: LibraryThing - Goodreads | Calamity Jack: LibraryThing - Goodreads]

Rapunzel has lived her whole life in the villa of Mother Gothel, never permitted to look over the surrounding wall. But when she finally catches a glimpse outside, she learns very quickly that Mother Gothel – who, it turns out, is not her mother at all – is a tyrant and the world outside is in need of a hero. Gothel imprisons Rapunzel in a tower – a tower that does something very weird to her hair – but she’s underestimated Rapunzel, who soon breaks out, teams up with a hapless thief named Jack, and sets off across the badlands of Gothel’s Reach, determined to rescue her real mother and bring Gothel down.

In Calamity Jack, Jack and Rapunzel returns to the city of Jack’s birth, from which he was forced to flee after a mishap involving a beanstalk and some giants. Now one of those giants has the city – and Jack’s mother – in an iron grip. With the help of an addlepated inventor and a cunning pixie, Jack must free the city from Blunderboar’s corruption, and prove to both Rapunzel and his mother that he’s more than just a common thief.

I absolutely loved the new Disney movie Tangled. And all of my comic book friends I’ve said that to have said, “You’ve read Rapunzel’s Revenge, right?” But I hadn’t! Not until my BFF Margot gave me both volumes as a Hannukah present, whereupon I promptly devoured them both on the subway home.

The Rapunzel books have pretty much everything I like: A redheaded semi-orphan protagonist with a cheerful, can-do attitude who won’t stand for injustice. A cocky thief with a heart of gold who’s constantly wavering between cunning badassery and adorable failiness. Feminist revisions of fairy tales. Westerns. Steampunk. Hilarity. Partners falling in love. High adventure! It’s like a personal love letter to me.

Of course, having all the things I like wouldn’t mean much if the books weren’t also, you know, good. Luckily, they’re excellent. The plotting is fast-paced and exciting, the dialogue is witty, and the characterizations are beautifully developed. The way Rapunzel grows into her own abilities in particular is wonderfully done, and her relationship with Jack is fairly standard, but adorable. The villains are nicely scary, and there was a twist in the second book that I legitimately didn’t see coming.

The art was also excellent. I like the draftsmanship a lot, and the coloring, but what really struck me was the composition. Some pages I had to just stop and admire the layouts and the skillful ways the writers and artist managed to get enormous amounts of storytelling into each panel. There’s a definite improvement between Rapunzel’s Revenge and Calamity Jack, but both books are really object lessons in how a perfect marriage of art and writing can create absolutely seamless storytelling.

Finally, wonderfully, the cast was racially diverse. That shouldn’t be such a surprise, but it was. Jack is Native American (or whatever the analogue in this fairy tale world is), but it doesn’t define his character or his family history in any way – he’s an urban baker’s son. It’s just his heritage. The different groups that Rapunzel encounters out west in Rapunzel’s Revenge are from a wide array of ethnicities (plus dwarves and giant sea serpents). It doesn’t take away from the fairy tale setting at all, which is the usual objection to a diverse cast – it enhances the Old West and urban settings of the books.

As you might imagine from all the gushing I just did, Rapunzel’s Revenge and Calamity Jack get five cupcakes. If the Hales decide to do another Rapunzel book – or, you know, any other graphic novels – I will be all over that.

Jaime Reyes was an ordinary kid, until a piece of advanced alien tech shaped like a scarab attached itself to his spine, giving him superpowers, and the Justice League dragged him into space to fight an evil satellite. Now he’s back in El Paso, trying to put his life back together after being missing for a year – and trying to learn how to control the scarab in his back, which wants to turn him into a killing machine. Oh, and the scarab’s creators, the Reach, have arrived on Earth, and Jaime’s the only one who knows they’re here to take over. Can the new Blue Beetle stop an alien invasion, protect his family and his city, and survive a legacy that’s already killed both his predecessors?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit my bias here: Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle before Jaime and who Jaime spends much of the series fanboying, is not just one of my all-time favorite superheroes, but one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, full-stop. So is his best friend, Booster Gold, who makes a heroic appearance towards the end, and Guy Gardner, the Green Lantern who makes regular appearances in the book, is way up there. And Ted, Booster, and Guy all met in the pages of Justice League International, one of my very favorite comics of all time, and one which this series makes deliberate allusions to. And Supergirl, my absolute favorite superhero, makes a cameo, and I’m awfully fond of Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle, and…look, this comic has a lot of things I adore in it before you even get into the actual subject matter. I’m predisposed to love it.

That said, even if you’re not me, it’s pretty darn good.

(A side note: Ongoing superhero comics, particularly those by DC and Marvel, tend to presuppose a certain familiarity with up to 70-plus years of backstory. Blue Beetle is better than most in that regard, but there are certainly moments that are caught up in the history of the Blue Beetle legacy, or characters the previous Blue Beetle was friends with, or what was going on in the rest of the DC Universe at the time. If you pick up these books based on this review and are confused, feel free to email me; I can talk for hours on end about Blue Beetle. Just ask my long-suffering co-blogger, who after years of friendship with me can tell you where Ted Kord grew up (Chicago), his favorite book (The Brothers Karamazov), and what kind of underwear he wears (boxers).)

Blue Beetle is both hilarious and exciting, but the real strength of the book is the characters. This, of course, starts with Jaime, who is endlessly lovable. He’s certainly a teenage boy, awkward and impatient and goofy, but he’s such a good boy; he’s brave and smart and responsible and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and he loves his parents and his friends and his little sister and he makes people better just by being around them. His dream is to become a dentist so that he can pay off his parents’ mortgage. And yet he never comes off like a too-perfect Gary Stu; he’s a believable, funny, kind of dorky, unbelievably sweet kid, in over his head but trying his best.

It’s very clear that this is in large part because of how he was raised. Jaime’s parents are fully realized characters in their own right, and wonderful. They expect obedience and respect from their son, but they also trust him – there’s a great scene where they lay down the ground rules for crimefighting at night (he doesn’t have to ask permission if there’s a natural disaster, but he does have to call). (Incidentally, the fact that Jaime’s family and friends all know his secret identity is extremely rare in comics, and very refreshing – rather than constantly lying to his loved ones, Jaime just trusts them, right away.) They believe in peace and the sacredness of human life, and talk to Jaime about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, but Bianca can back down a Green Lantern (one of the most powerful superheroes in the cosmos) like a naughty child, and Alberto will fearlessly face off against a mob boss who dares bring guns onto his property. The strength of Jaime’s upbringing is encapsulated in one wonderful panel: when a defeated supervillain asks why Jaime doesn’t just kill him, Jaime simply says “That’s not how my mother raised me.” Darn straight.

Milagro, Jaime’s much younger sister, is great, too – whiny and plucky and believable. One particularly sweet moment between her and Jaime led to me bursting into tears on the subway (which happened three times – between that and all the giggling, I must have looked like a lunatic). And Jaime’s best friends, Brenda and Paco, are pretty much everything I love wrapped up in a bow – Brenda is a smart, overachieving, determined and independent redhead who can flip a guy twice her size to the ground, and Paco is a big, lovably smug goofball who acts like an idiotic BMOC but is actually extremely smart and loyal. She fights aliens! He saves babies! Maybe they’re in love maybe? Shh, don’t tell them.

And the story! The series is brilliantly-plotted and paced; the second half of End Game had me on the edge of my seat. (It should be noted that the series continued after this for about ten more issues, but I haven’t read those yet.) The gradual development of the scarab is beautifully done, and the climatic battle, with all of Jaime’s allies coming together, is one of those moments that makes the reader want to stand up and cheer (the one crazy thing I actually did manage to avoid doing on the subway).

I also loved the art, which goes through quite a few artists but always has a modern, kinetic, urban feel that fits both Jaime’s character and his powers very well. It’s also refreshing that none of women are drawn in nonsensically skimpy outfits, or contorting their bodies into uncomfortable, “sexy” poses; though the teenage girls have a tendency to wear belly shirts, it comes off as oddly dated fashion more than creepy objectification.

Oh, and did I mention that the cast is almost entirely Hispanic and the setting within a Latino community is handled with taste, careful thought, and understanding? The characters never come off as stereotypes, the bilingual factor is handled well (one issue is almost entirely in Spanish, and it’s wonderful (don’t worry, there’s a translation in the back)), and – there’s that word again – it’s just refreshing to see a non-white hero leading a non-white cast in a story that’s about the character and not his race, since mainstream comics don’t often handle that well. (Jaime’s interracial relationship with his Asian – and incredibly competent and funny magical detective – girlfriend Traci is also well done and very cute.)

The only bad thing I can say about this series is that it was sadly canceled after 36 issues (the four books reviewed here cover the first 26 of those). (Don’t worry, Jaime’s still appearing in the sadly-dreadful Teen Titans and will be featured in the upcoming Generation Lost, and is a major player on the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold, so the character, at least, isn’t going anywhere for a while.) Since I can’t fault the series for heartbreaking decisions made by the company, Blue Beetle gets the coveted five cupcakes, and a double thumbs-up from longtime Blue Beetle pal Booster Gold:

It doesn’t get much better than that, I tell you what.

Incarceron is a prisoner unlike any other: it is alive, and holds thousands of prisoners inside it, in a bleak, ever-changing, deadly landscape. Finn awoke inside with no memories, but is sure he came from somewhere else — even though most other prisoners don’t believe the Outside even exists, or that Escape is possible.

Claudia is the daughter of Incarceron’s warden, soon to be married to a prince. Caught up in a web of intrigue and not sure who to trust, she searches for her father’s key — and through it finds Finn. Desperate, she’s sure Finn is the only one who can help her, and she’s certainly the only one who can help him.

But they have only hours to get him out, before her wedding takes place, and all hope to free not just the prisoners, but the entire trapped world is gone…

Oh man, you guys. During the four days I was reading this book, I kept running into articles about how it’s going to be the Next Big Thing in YA, and had to flee spoilers. But I hope it is the Next Big Thing, because it’s pretty much awesome.

I’m crazy for worldbuilding, and Incarceron‘s world is awesome. The world itself is one of the most interesting dystopias I’ve run across: several hundred years in the future, after some sort of horrific war (the “Years of Rage” — the book does have a minor tendency towards Significant Caps, but thankfully doesn’t take it too far), technology has been banned, but the wealthy still have it in semi-secret. The world itself is subject to Protocol (like I said about those caps…), which forces everyone into a sort of pre-industrial revolution existence, complete with corsets and capes and carriages (…alliteration is all mine, though). But the Protocol is oppressive, and the only people who find it entertaining or romantic are the people wealthy enough to use contraband technology — everyone else, for example, is illiterate, and likely to die from lack of vaccines. The combination of the Protocol and the sci-fi tech gave the whole thing a steampunky feel, which I really liked. (Hence it gets both the dystopian and steampunk labels up top.)

And then there’s the inside of Incarceron. Creepy, creepy, creepy. And again, a strange blend of sci-fi and steampunk — people born with mechanical limbs, metal forests, and the technology of Icarceron itself, contrasted with people living in semi-nomadic tribes, fighting with swords for survival, believing in magic and superstition. (Or is it only superstition …?)

The characters were great: Finn calls on a lot of standard fantasy/scifi tropes, but does so very well. I love that he isn’t just instantly a nice guy in a bad situation — he does bad things, and spends a lot of the book coming to terms with them and growing a conscience. I had a harder time getting a bead on Claudia, since she’s less archetypal, but she’s an active heroine (yay!), interesting and complex in her own right. And the supporting cast is equally complex: for example, the morally ambiguous guy is actually ambiguous. In many novels, that’s the guy you can tell either going to defect to the badguys, or get an obvious redemption in the end. Instead, I actually wasn’t able to tell which side he’d end up on in the end.

And then there were the twists at the end. I thought I called the book’s big twist — turned out it wasn’t the biggest, or even close. The last section is just reveal after reveal, and wow. I haven’t wanted a sequel this badly since I finished Catching Fire.

The one real quibble I had is minor at best. The first section has a lot of people expositioning awkwardly at one another — “Well, Claudia, let me explain this thing to you that you and I are both already aware of, but it bears repeating for no real reason except it’s a good way to explain to the reader.” It’s less than graceful, needless to say. But since I couldn’t put the book down, and every time I started to write this conclusion I realized I had another glowing thing to say, this book is a solid five cupcakes.

When Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, receives a telepathic cry for help from a dear friend at the secret monastery of Vbngoom, he and his best friends Katie and Lily journey to the mountains of Delaware to offer their assistance. But Delaware is a strange and dangerous place, and they must make their way past dinosaurs, tourists, spies, mountain squid, riddles, and a creepy staring-contest team to reach Vbngoom – and there’s something even worse waiting for them at their destination.

A few years ago I read the first (and apparently only) two books in the M. T. Anderson’s Thrilling Tales series: Whales on Stilts and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen. The first was just kind of a brisk, silly story; the second one, while equally silly, broke my heart in all the right places. The protagonist of both books is Lily Gefelty, a smart and somewhat shy but basically average tween. However, her two best friends are each the stars of their own (fictional) book series. Katie Mulligan is the lead in the Horrow Hollow series, a sort of combination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Goosebumps and is constantly fighting werewolves and witches and demonic mold and such. Jasper Dash is the star of Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, a pulp science fiction series from the 1930s and 40s, and is constantly inventing (often unhelpful) gadgets and saying things like “Dash it all, chums.” Lily longs to be adventurous and exciting like her friends, but the Thrilling Tales series showcases her own heroic traits while brilliantly exploring what it means to be a beloved fictional character.

While I loved Jasper in the Thrilling Tales books, I was worried that Anderson was moving away from spotlighting Lily, but I needn’t have worried – the book is split fairly evenly between Lily’s worries about being inferior to her friends, Katie’s full throttle sass, and Jasper’s struggles to live in a modern world while upholding justice and fair play. It’s hilarious and exciting and, yes, I got a bit misty at the end. Curse you, Anderson!

Now, these books aren’t for everyone. I can tell you right off the bat that my co-blogger Becky probably wouldn’t enjoy the aggressively whimsical tone of the prose; my roommate read the first two and didn’t enjoy the silliness (although she loved Anderson’s completely different Feed and Octavian Nothing); my friend Mackenzie probably wouldn’t like all the metatextual navel-gazing. But I love silliness and meta, and I’m a big fan of the whimsical tone when it’s done well. If you enjoy the flippancy of A Series of Unfortunate Events, you’ll probably enjoy Jasper Dash.

There’s honestly not much to say about this book beyond praise. Lily and Katie are both wonderfully strong in their own ways, and Katie’s romantic tribulations were handled very touchingly and age-appropriately. Jasper is hilarious and endearing, and the friendship between the main three is rock-solid, moving, and blessedly free of any whiff of romance. The plot, despite the silliness, was engaging, and the excitement exciting, and the subtle digs at racist tourists were well done.

Obviously, Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware gets five cupcakes. More, please, Mr. Anderson?

The Hunger Games are over, and all Katniss wants is to go back to her normal life. But the government isn’t happy with her – not least because she’s unwittingly become the face of the rebellion. As unrest grows in Panem, Katniss begins to realize that surviving the Hunger Games was only the beginning.

Becky and I both loved The Hunger Games, and were on the edge of our seats waiting for Catching Fire to come out. It did not disappoint. I can’t say much without spoiling it, but I can tell you that Collins’s prose and plotting are as brilliant and gripping as always. The Hunger Games was full of fascinating, morally-murky characters who remain just as fascinating this time around, though the characters introduced in this book are eager to give them a run for their money. Katniss remains brilliant and badass and utterly socially inept. Panem gets even creepier and more intriguing. I could not put this book down.

All that said, I do have two very brief quibbles. One is that the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale is played up a lot in this book, and I can’t stand love triangles. That’s a personal preference (or un-preference), though. The other is that Collins glosses over major scenes a few times, summarizing them in a paragraph or two instead of showing us the dialogue, action, and emotions that are going on. It would be one thing if these were minor, unimportant slice-of-life scenes, but they’re pivotal moments. It’s bizarre, since Collins is usually such a flawless writer, and goodness knows Scholastic has given writers a few extra pages to fit everything in in the past (*coughHarryPottercough*).

Still, these are the faintest of objections to an otherwise incredible book. Collins maintains her perfect average here at Active Voice, as Catching Fire gets five cupcakes. (Psst! Suzanne! We’ll give you six next time if you get the third book out fast!)

Title: Graceling
Author: Kristin Cashore
Genre: High Fantasy
Pages: 471

Summary: Everyone fears Gracelings — and they fear Katsa most of all, for she’s Graced with the ability to kill. Her uncle, the King, uses her as a strong arm to bully his nobles, but Katsa hates being treated like a mad dog, and is determined to get out from under his thumb. Doing that, however, thrusts her into some international intrigue she never could have imagined…

Thoughts: Holy crap, did I love this book. It isn’t perfect, but it’s delightful and exciting and I love Katsa (and Po, and Bitterblue, and Raffin, and etc…). Really, it had me completely at this exchange:

Sighing, Helda carried the dress from the bathing room. “It would look stunning, My Lady,” she called, “with your dark hair and eyes.”

Katsa yanked at one of the more stubborn knots in her hair. She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. “If there’s anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I’ll hit him in the face.”

This book is totally worth a full review someday, and I will absolutely a) reread it, and b) pick up Cashore’s next book when it comes out. Five cupcakes.

By Suzanne Collins [LibraryThing - Amazon]

Katniss Everdeen is a poacher in the poorest district of Panem, the country that exists where the United States used to be. She’s been single-handedly supporting her family for five years, and would do anything for her little sister — even take her sister’s place in Panem’s brutal Hunger Games, in which tributes (more accurately described as sacrifices) from each district are forced to fight each other to the death. On national television. At first, no one takes Kat seriously, but even as she proves herself a formidable opponent she rages against the system, knowing that if she survives and wins the Hunger Games, she may lose her humanity altogether.

Jess and I both read this book, in fact, devoured it, within days of its initial release last year. We’ve been trying to review it for months now, but it keeps getting put off, because there’s not actually much to say. You see, this book is., in a word, phenomenal. We have no real criticisms, and we don’t want to spoil anything for anyone. All we could really think to do is list some of the ways in which it’s awesome.

So here you go!

1. Kat is a fantastic character. She’s a first-person narrator; she’s jaded and cynical, and very angry at the world — and understandably, given everything she’s been through even before the Games get started. She’s incredibly kick-ass and active in all the ways we love our protagonists to be, and her internal dilemma is as compelling as the external danger she’s in: if Kat manages to win the games, it’ll be by becoming a cold-blooded murderer, and losing her humanity. She’s terrified of letting that happen. But her only other alternative is to die. So what’s a girl to do?

2. The world building. It’s definitely a dystopian story, and Panem is a scary place. The difference between the haves and have-nots is striking and stark. The way Panem deals with enemies is also terrifying: the book takes place 80 years after a failed uprising — the event that gave rise to the original Hunger Games — in which one district was completely obliterated and is now basically salted earth; and Katniss runs across several horrific mutant animals that were used as weapons in that war. But on a smaller scale, she also sees what happens to individuals who dissent — and since she’s the hero, and Panem’s capital is villainous, of course we want her to dissent as readers. But we definitely know what the stakes are for that, and they aren’t pretty.

3. The plotting. The book is incredibly tightly plotted, full both moral dilemmas and serious danger (and you never get the feeling that Kat will be okay, just because she’s narrating). It isn’t a shock that the book is so well-drawn, given how utterly phenomenal Collins’ Underland Chronicles were, especially towards the end when all the small bits and pieces came into play. I can only imagine the scale on which that will happen in the Hunger Games trilogy, because with a first book as well written as this, and knowing that Collins is an amazing writer who can truly follow through on everything she has set up, I can only imagine the series getting better. And that is saying something, because the first book is really, really, really good.

Do I even need to say it? Five cupcakes and all the sprinkles in the world.