I think the crux of the issue of SOTR for me is that while it is a very interesting story with powerful concepts and messaging and themes, it doesn’t quite feel like it was supposed to be Haymitch’s story.

It feels a little too at odds at times from what we learn of Haymitch when Katniss and Peeta watch his games in Catching Fire. And before anyone tells me “that’s the point!” or “you’re falling for Capitol propaganda! We all fell for Capitol propaganda!!” the issue here is that no, I don’t think we did, because when SC wrote about Haymitch’s games in Catching Fire, I doubt she was doing it in mind of a Haymitch prequel more than a decade down the line that would recontextualize the entire story. I think what she wrote in Catching Fire in 2009 about Haymitch’s games is exactly what it was supposed to be.

Then I think present day SC sat down to write sotr and decided she wanted to write a story about the long-standing power of propaganda. That rebellions are long burning and slow building and people will try and fail and try again. And so she adapted Haymitch’s story to fit those themes.

And that’s fine! It’s fine that it’s a bit of a retcon. A retcon doesn’t have to be inherently bad and I did find SOTR entertaining overall but like I said, I don’t think it fits so cleanly with the rest of the trilogy as others seem to think it does.

For instance, taking these scenes from Catching Fire:

Given what know now from SOTR… well Katniss and Peeta’s understandings and takeaways aren’t quite right anymore, are they? “But what she doesn’t know, and what he does, is that the ax will return.” The implication here being that Haymitch planned that moment. But actually Katniss, that’s wrong! Haymitch wasn’t intentionally leading Silka to the cliff to use the forcefield against her, that was all a complete accident. And it’s even worse because Katniss follows it up with: “I think I finally know who Haymitch is. And I’m beginning to know who I am.” because now this is a scene where she’s actually misreading Haymitch to a degree. Sure, her final conclusion is still ultimately correct: She and Haymitch are both people who have caused the Capitol trouble. And she’s right in more ways now than she can know but she’s also wrong about Haymitch in a significant way as well. (And it sucks because I’ve seen so many takes now joking about how Katniss is just sooooo bad at reading people but guys I think she was spot on here until Haymitch’s story was altered lmao)

And then, just in a general sense, I think the pacing of SOTR is odd at times. I also think it occasionally suffers from a telling instead of showing, being a bit more heavy-handed in its messaging where the original trilogy wasn’t. (Like when Haymitch abruptly called Maysilee his sister, just to make sure that we the readers understood their dynamic).

I also struggled to get into Haymitch’s and Lenore Dove’s romance because despite him waxing poetic about her every page, we only had a single chapter to establish their relationship and her character before they spend the rest of the book apart until the very end. And its a struggle for me because her presence takes up so much of the story and his thoughts, to a degree that I almost felt I wasn’t reading about Haymitch anymore at times. On the flip side, I felt like his brother and mother didn’t take up nearly enough of his headspace. Like Sid gets pretty much a single line in the epilogue in a sea of Lenore Dove paragraphs.

As for Haymitch’s characterization… this is where we get far more into a personal preference territory, but I won’t lie, I was and still am far more partial to a “resourceful Haymitch exploring the arena out of his own volition and outsmarting the gamemakers through his own ingenuity” instead of a “resourceful Haymitch acting out a rebel plan from others”. I also am more interested in a Haymitch that lead Silka to the cliff to goad her into essentially killing herself than a Haymitch that ended up there seemingly just to escape her or buy time. And sure Haymitch was still intelligent in SOTR, but too often it felt like he was no longer the driving force in his own story. (which very well might have been the point? but if it was, then the execution of it didn’t do much for me).

As for the rebel subplot: conceptually I thought it was interesting… but again, I thought the execution of it left a lot to be desired as it completely lost me the moment Haymitch wasn’t insta-killed after blowing the water system. And I know we’re given in-universe reasons for why he wasn’t killed, but I simply can’t buy into it. There were still plenty of tributes left, so it’s not like the game makers and Snow had to keep him around. I don’t think it would have mattered how popular Haymitch was at that point to the viewers. Haymitch also hadn’t done anything yet that couldn’t have been edited out so it’s not like he had to be kept around by Snow and made into an example for other victors. And I think Haymitch had “suffered” enough in the games at that point for Snow to take him out with mutts. (ALSO - I couldn’t help but feel that this rebel plot might have been better suited to an Ampert-centered story? Since Ampert seems to be driving so much of the crucial, behind the scenes work that is.)

But this is grossly long so to wrap this up: In my ideal world, this prequel would have gone one of two ways.

(1) A prequel with the themes and messaging and storylines of SOTR but centered on a different character (Ampert? A career, even? This could be an entirely different year of games with no Haymitch)

(2) A Haymitch prequel, but his games are way more in-line with what we were presented with in Catching Fire (still with a degree of propaganda), no beetee-rebel subplot, and we would’ve spent more time before the games in district 12, as well as after the games tracking his downward spiral.