Real or not real? I am on fire. The balls of flame that erupted from the parachutes shot over the barricades, through the snowy air, and landed in the crowd.

I don’t know; you’re the narrator.  You tell me.

Let’s see, bombs don’t actually shoot fireballs, so there’s that.  Then again, this book has already screwed physics six ways from Sunday, so it probably means for that to all be real.

But, really, bombs don’t shoot fireballs.  Or fire in any shape.  Bombs release explosive energy which will do damage by actual force.  Fire is not a factor.  Unless the bomb is specifically crafted to be incendiary, or unless something was already on fire when the bomb hit, it’s not going to happen.  But, hey, screw that, let’s go with Hollywood explosions instead.  (Special effects designers add gasoline to their explosions to get the fireball effect, purely so that it will show up on screen, because “explosive energy” is invisible and all.)

I was just turning away when one caught me, ran its tongue up the back of my body, and transformed me into something new.

So, when I was little and we’d go camping, I liked to try and catch stuff on fire.  Stuff that I should be trying to catch on fire. Big stuff like coats and bags.  (I don’t know, I was an odd kid.  Constantly scaring my parents.)  Turns out that nearly everything will not catch fire if you just pass it over the flames.  Even paper you have to leave there for a second.  Hair will go up pretty fast…  But, yeah, if this is just a big flash of fire and then it’s over, then she should just be warm and singed, not actually catching, because you have to leave clothes on the fire for several seconds at least before they’ll catch.

The doctors’ puzzlement grows over why I’m unable to speak. Many tests are done, and while there’s damage to my vocal cords, it doesn’t account for it. Finally, Dr. Aurelius, a head doctor, comes up with the theory that I’ve become a mental, rather than physical, Avox.

So, we get a long and drawn out account of how poetically sad her recovering was, which I find irritating but mostly unobjectionable.  And then this, which is the first word on anyone even wanting her to speak.  Until now she’s just being drugged to the gills and dreaming, but all of a sudden she’s “unable”?  

Also, she’s been through a lot of trauma and not talking isn’t an unusual reaction.  There’s no need to apply your special little made up word as if there’s not a real term for it.  (Selective mutism.)

The descriptions of Katniss grief after she gets out of the hospital, her disoriented state as she just wanders around and has memory lapses of what she’s actually doing, and the mindlessly methodical way she does everything…I like all that.  It’s a nice depiction.

[I] am required to bathe. It’s not the water I mind, but the mirror that reflects my naked fire-mutt body.

Well, then, what are you doing about it?  People who have issues about stuff like this do more than just mutely report on it.  They cover up the mirror, or bathe with the lights out, or sponge-bath in sections so as not to be fully naked at any time.  It’s like this book could only think of one reaction to grief – hiding in closets – and just called it a day at that.

Parts of my hair were singed off completely; the rest has been chopped off at odd lengths.

As I said, hair burns fast.  If she was on fire long enough for her skin to burn, she was on fire more than long enough for her hair to burn off.

Dr. Aurelius shows up sometimes. I like him because he doesn’t say stupid things like how I’m totally safe, or that he knows I can’t see it but I’ll be happy again one day, or even that things will be better in Panem now. He just asks if I feel like talking, and when I don’t answer, he falls asleep in his chair. In fact, I think his visits are largely motivated by his need for a nap. The arrangement works for both of us.

I see this book is continuing to take a dim view on mental health.  This guy sounds like the worst therapist ever.  

I emerge and turn left instead of right. I find myself in a strange part of the mansion, and immediately lose my bearings.

Wait, she’s been wandering around this place for weeks (days? months?) so why can’t that just continue?  Why the need to call it lost instead of just further wandering?  

Is it because something ploty is about to happen, and therefore it has to be an accident?

I turn a corner and find myself staring at two surprised guards. […] Still bandaged and gaunt

Wow, pretty weaksauce security measures around your world’s version of Hitler.  Pretty much anyone with determination enough to take out two injured people would be able to get in there and do anything to him.

their guns form an X in front of me.

FFS THEY’RE NOT HALBERDS, YOU DON’T DO THAT WITH GUNS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

“On my authority,” says Paylor. “She has a right to anything behind that door.” These are her soldiers, not Coin’s.

Well, this place is fucked.

There’s already going to be enough discord and confusion in a place like this without individual commanders running around with their own private armies, and everyone countering orders of everyone else.  There needs to be a unified system of command.  And while I can imagine there not being one (because chaos happens), it’s still a bad thing and I’d like to see some acknowledgement of that.  Especially since this book has already pulled out the “everything is personal” routine more than once.

I wander through the aisles of carefully pruned plants, looking but not touching, because I have learned the hard way how deadly these beauties can be.

No you haven’t.  There have been no deadly roses at all in any of these books.  There’s just been deadly things wearing roses.

take up a pair of pruning shears,

That she found in the room.  The room that has Snow.  Snow has access to sharp blades and only two injured guards between him and (partial) escape.

Fuck it, I don’t know what part of the drinking game that falls under, but it deserves a drink all the same. \~/

“So wasteful, so unnecessary. Anyone could see the game was over by that point. In fact, I was just about to issue an official surrender when they released those parachutes.”  […]  I take life for very specific reasons. And there was no reason for me to destroy a pen full of Capitol children. None at all.”

And so we get to the question of who killed the kids.  The problem, of course, is that both Snow’s statements are true.  Neither side had cause to bomb them.  The rebels didn’t need to because they were already in the middle of the city and overrunning the last tactical target.  Snow didn’t need to because he’d already lost, and also he didn’t have the means to.  Any which way you look at this, it’s pointless.  Utterly pointless.  \~/

“However, I must concede it was a masterful move on Coin’s part. The idea that I was bombing our own helpless children instantly snapped whatever frail allegiance my people still felt to me. There was no real resistance after that.

Here we have an attempt at an excuse, but again, they were already winning.  

“My failure,” says Snow, “was being so slow to grasp Coin’s plan. To let the Capitol and districts destroy one another, and then step in to take power with Thirteen barely scratched.

Bullshit, they were sending out soldiers and supplies the whole time.  Not to mention their population was depleted, so it’s not like they could have mounted an attack all on their own.  And what’s with that “destroy each other” thing?  The districts were oppressed by the capitol, and then they fought back.  It’s not like 13 pitted them against each other.

Make no mistake, she was intending to take my place right from the beginning.

Oh, yes, the horror of a woman thinking she can do better than an evil dictator.  How dare she.

I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it was Thirteen that started the rebellion that led to the Dark Days

75 years ago or more, so, not Coin, but her parent’s generation.  This statement has nothing to do with the current conversation.

and then abandoned the rest of the districts when the tide turned against it.

Uh, no, you bombed the daylights out of them.  That’s not abandoning, that’s defeat.

Man, this book wants SO HARD to vilify District 13, but it can’t do it with the current set-up.  It didn’t make a villainous group, so all these tacked-on justifications are just…weird.  Either that or it really does think that fighting an evil dictator, getting beat, hanging on just barely, and coming back for a second try makes one…bad?

Fucking weird.