DH read it and very much didn't like it, so that plus me being kind of ooky on the premise meant I haven't read it yet

I don't think the series as a whole pays off that well, but the first book in particular is written in that OMG CANNOT PUT THIS DOWN kind of way that makes for best-sellers and movie franchises. And if you read it fast enough you won't notice all the world-building problems.

The premise, though, is definitely ooky: it's a dystopia, even more so than Westerfeld's Uglies universe. Which I think is all-around a much better series, but doesn't have quite that insane narrative drive THG does.

I just finished Mockingjay, and I didn't see the ending as being particularly bleak, except in that Panem is still a pretty damn bleak place. Everdeen, however, rejects the role as pawn she was forced into by the revolutionaries. The world can change. The games are over; people know about the other districts and what the Capitol did.

If you want compelling and the absolutely anti-bleak, go with Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear.

I have a slowly growing list of writers I used to love whose narrative tics are making me no longer love them. Okay, for "list" I mean: Connie Willis and Guy Gavriel Kay.

But Passage was full of those miscommunication-confusion-chaos bits driving the narrative, and it annoyed me, and apparently the new duology is more of the same. Not sure I can deal with it, especially not for 800 pages or whatever it is.

As for Kay, waaay too much ungrounded foreshadowing and playing hide-the-baby with the reader.

Suela, I felt very much as I expect you'd feel about Willis's new duology. (And it's more like 1,000 pages -- maybe more!) Way too much of the plot, and too many of the individual scenes, hang on a missed connection or communication gone awry, and in the second book, I nearly lost it when a character from 2060 has to go back to the 1970s to read archived newspapers. Do internet archives no longer exist in 2060??? There were definitely things I liked about it, but I felt like it was a 400-page book screaming to be freed from the 600 pages of unnecessary interior monologues and narrative trickery surrounding it.

Has anyone read Jennifer Crusie's new book?

Maybe this time? I did - I enjoyed it.

ION, I got Victory of Eagles from the bmoc2 which is owned by the same people who own the Science Fiction Book Club and it came with a poster of Temeraire and the fleet. (Its this one). I like it.

Has anyone read Jennifer Crusie's new book?

Maybe this time? I did - I enjoyed it.

I loved it. I read it all in one day because I couldn't put it down, but it is a little different from her other novels in that there is a supernatural element.

Started Catching Fire. Aaah! Katniss is so fucked! District 12 is so fucked! THEY ARE ALL SO FUCKED!

sumi, that's a beautiful poster! My copy of VoE is the US edition, and the art isn't nearly that nice. Still a good read, though: I liked it much better than Tongues of Serpents.

Kat, Crusie has the first chapter of Maybe This Time up on her website.