A song for Cinder

I finished Scarlet yesterday (it's excellent, you should read it!), and I am now in love with this song. It fits the book so well. ^_^

Review: I Am Ocilla, by Diane Graham

Back cover: Open your heart and mind to the simplicity and complexity of a name.

I know only my name. Beyond that is confusion, a void where fantasy and reality swirl together. Fairies, Giants, Elves, Dwarves, ancient Keepers, and…Dragons?

A dark soul threatens the Five Kingdoms, but I am powerless to stand against him, overwhelmed by phantom memories, broken and lost.

Somehow, I must live. I must find my purpose. There are friends to love and battles to fight.

I know my name. Perhaps that is enough.

I am Ocilla.

My thoughts: The very first thing that caught my eye about this book is the cover. It's beautiful. Notice the little reflected shadow of the dragon? Now that I've read it, I understand why this is there, and it's even cooler.

Ocilla starts out the story trapped and badly injured in a dungeon. Her mind is empty of memories. She's rescued by a father-and-son pair of dryads (their race is not named that I can remember, but that's what they are like). The story gets going quickly, and soon Ocilla's impulsive curiosity begins getting her into trouble (and making her new friends).

The story reminded me a little of the Neverending Story. The large cast of often whimsical characters, unusual twists on familiar fantasy races, and their particular curses which Ocilla is prophesied to cure, make the world quite colorful. My favorite is honestly Ocilla herself. There were several times later in the book when I couldn't keep straight who was who, but most of the characters have unique voices.

It also reminded me of Donita Paul's "cozy fantasy" stories, because while the stakes are sometimes high, there's never much doubt that things will be resolved and the day will be saved. The first-person present-tense makes it feel dreamlike and peaceful. It's really quite pretty, if not quite my cup of tea (I'm not generally a fan of present tense style). The villain is nevertheless plenty horrifying whenever he appears in a scene. It's wonderfully done.

The idea of a person's name also being a song that gets longer and changes as they grow and age, is a lovely and creative one. That was my favorite part about the book.

As we see Ocilla flash back to multiple previous incarnations, it's implied that she and her companions are ancient souls that live again and again as they struggle to defeat the villain. The concept is one I've never seen used in a story before, and it's interesting, though kind of confusing. Some Christians are probably going to be bothered by the idea, but I sort of thought of it as being a little like Doctor Who; quite different scenario, true, but in that show, having multiple incarnations is something that's natural to the Time Lord race (it also makes actor changes convenient), and is not a religious concept at all. Same thing here. It's just something that happens in this particular story world; a plot device.

Recommendation: Read it if you like traditional fairytale fantasy and quieter stories. If you prefer books with more intense action or suspense, it might not be for you.

Author's site
B&N
Amazon

Review: Heartless, by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Back cover: Princess Una of Parumvir has come of age and will soon marry. She dreams of a charming prince, but when her first suitor arrives, he's not what she'd hoped. Prince Aethelbald of mysterious Farthestshore has travelled a great distance to prove his love -- and also to bring hushed warnings of danger. A dragon is rumored to be on the hunt and blazing a path of terror.

Una, smitten instead with a more dashing prince, refuses Aethelbald's offer -- and ignores his cautions with dire consequences. Soon the Dragon King himself is in Parumvir and Una, in giving her heart away unwisely, finds herself in his sights. Only those courageous enough to risk everything have a hope of fighting off this advancing evil.

My thoughts: To be honest, when I first saw this series on Goodreads I was more interested in Veiled Rose (the second book) than this one. A girl with a secret, living in the forest, who becomes friends with a boy and helps him hunt for a monster? Yes, please! This one sounded as if the emphasis was more on romance, so I was inclined to buy the other one first, until I saw that this one was free. Yes!

I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. The story has an old-fashioned beginning that takes time to build up. When the Dragon King finally breaks into the castle it gets pretty intense. You might suspect, with how many times dragons have laid waste to kingdoms in stories, that this would be clichéd, but oh, it's not. The Dragon is interested in more than just killing and maiming, more than just treasure. . . he wants Una, and what he wants to do with her is terrifying -- he wants to turn her into a dragon. He's so powerful, that they can't keep him out of the castle, and he succeeds. That's the point when the story really becomes a fairytale, Grimm-style. I had dreams about it for days, and I had to start my own story to help myself think about it. Books that are thought-provoking like this are the best kind.

I definitely liked Felix better than Una. The scenes where Aethelbald helps him learn swordfighting are wonderful ones. Una drove me crazy with her silly dislike of Aethelbald. He wasn't romantic enough for her? But he came from the faery realm! How could she care about his name being hard to pronounce?! *cough* She really should have known better. Of course, I can't say for sure that I wouldn't have been a sucker for Leonard too. I might have been as bad as Una. It made me wonder: would I have told Aethelbald about the horrible nightmares and asked him for help, if it was me? Or would I be just as foolish?

Speaking of Aethelbald, I felt like partway through the story, when he started searching for Una, the symbolism in him was a little too close to the surface and it threw me out of the story a bit. A passing thing, but worth observing. I don't know if I would feel the same way on a second read.

I can't finish this review without mentioning Monster, Una's mysterious blind cat. He came to her from Goldstone Wood, so of course there's much more to him than he appears. He can pass under the gaze of the Dragon without being noticed. He guides Una and tries to help her, and helps Felix and the others find their way when they're lost and fleeing. The fourth book, Starflower, is going to be about him and Dame Imraldera, and I can't wait to read it!

Also: isn't the cover beautiful?

Recommendation: I'd recommend Heartless to anyone who likes fairytales or fantasy stories with a mysterious, eerie atmosphere. It's still free on Amazon and B&N, so check it out!

Author's website: Tales of Goldstone Wood

Top Ten Tuesday: Books For People Who Liked Harry Potter

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

I've wanted to make a list like this ever since I saw one in a library somewhere as a kid -- "If You Liked Harry Potter" or something -- with a whole bunch of books on it that I had read and hated, and others that I had already read a million times (Chronicles of Narnia, I'm looking at you). I wanted a better one so much. Well, here's mine!

1. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

2. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

3. Monster Blood Tattoo / The Foundling's Tale by D. M. Cornish

4. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

5. Gregor the Overlander (and following series) by Suzanne Collins (Better than Hunger Games, imho.)

6. Howl's Moving Castle and sequels by Diana Wynne Jones

7. Finding Angel by Kat Heckenbach

8. On The Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson. Don't let the title fool you, it's actually really good. And the following books in the series are even better.

9. Dragonspell by Donita K. Paul (The third book of this series is the best one.)

10. By Darkness Hid by Jill Williamson

Top Ten Tuesday: Books You'd Like To See Made Into A Movie

 

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Everyone knows that books are (almost) always better than the movies made from them. Just the same, it's  fun to see them acted out or animated on the screen.

1. Replication: The Jason Experiment by Jill Williamson. It would have to be animated. 55 clones of varying ages? Hard for an actor to pull off. . . even with motion capture, I bet. The voice acting would even be tough. I don't know. It really wouldn't work, but if it could, it would be amazing.

2. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien. They're making the Hobbit. I wish they could make this one too!

3. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull. This would be SO COOL as a movie. Everything about it is right -- it's straightforward, fast-paced, and fun. If they could do well with it, more in the fashion of the first two HP movies and less in the fashion of the Spiderwick Chronicles, I think lots of people would want to see it.

4. The Door Within by Wayne Thomas Batson. I hope this happens eventually. And that they can let the story stand on its own. Christian movies always seem to require some kind of added-in didactic message that ruins the whole thing. No one goes to the movie theater for a sermon. They go for an awesome story! Not everything has to be "useful."

5. The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. YES PLEASE. I'd say Forest Born, but I think it's too introverted to translate well as a movie.

6. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett. (Unless it's already a movie, and I don't know.) Basically, just because Susan is in it, and she's awesome.

7. Warrior Cats: Into the Wild by Erin Hunter. This would be animated. Maybe anime. It would be unusual, because so many movies with cats portray them as evil (so unfair).

8. Foundling, Lamplighter, and Factotum by D. M. Cornish. One movie for each, and they would have to be made in Australia because that would be really neat. (And have Alan Rickman as Sebastipole! Though he's maybe a bit old.) They would also have to forget the stupid audience-pandering that seems to ruin every movie made nowadays and just do a decent job for once! (Case in point: the Prince Caspian movie. SUSAN DOES NOT KISS CASPIAN, okay? They only put that in because they thought it would make teenage girls more excited and thus rake in more money.{In MBT, what would they do to add a love interest? Make Rossamünd kiss Threnody? *makes face*}  And they also added more battles for the boys. {There's already plenty of violence in MBT so that shouldn't be an issue, but you know, it probably would be anyway. They might take a leaf filmstrip out of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and slim down battle scenes that are in the book to make room for nonsensical added scenes that they made up.} Just, come on. I get that books and movies are different. So make adaptations, not fanfics! /end rant)

9. Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet. It would be so beautiful.

10. Matched by Ally Condie. Romance. Forbidden poetry. I'm not usually into dystopian or romance, but I liked this one. :)

What about you? What books would you like to see made into movies?

A free book! Yippee!!

Heartless by Anne Elizabeth Stengl is free on Amazon for this week! I'm excited! I've been wishing I could read it for months. :D It's been ages since I got to read something new. Since I got it free, I'll definitely write a review for it, too. :)

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Were Totally Deceiving

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

1. The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. When I was 14, everyone I knew was talking about it, and I had no idea what it was so I (foolishly) asked my father about it. (This was before Wikipedia.) Confused by the title, he (I only found this out much later) thought I was talking about the Lord of the Flies (HORRORS) and told me he'd read it in school and that it was the worst book ever written.  I believed him, at first, but what other people were saying did not match up. At all. And then the movie came on TV. I was hooked. So, so, so unbearably, marvelously hooked. The Lord of the Rings became my favorite book ever, in triumph over its misunderstood title. Peter Jackson's movies may have flaws (of which poor Faramir is the most wronged victim), but because they're what brought me to the books, they are pure epic win as far as I'm concerned.

2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling. The back cover of my paperback copy says Harry blows up Aunt Petunia. WRONG. It's Aunt Marge. Gur.

3. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. I picked up this book a couple times and thought it was childish, and Taran was irritating. It took a third time for me to finally read far enough in to see that it actually gets pretty good later (once Eilonwy and Fflewddur show up). I love Fflewddur, and I can totally sympathize with him over the constantly bursting strings on his harp. If I had one like his, the strings would probably bust a lot too. . . It's just so easy to make a story I'm telling someone more interesting, that sometimes I don't even realize I'm adding to it until it's too late. :P

4. The Door Within, by Wayne Thomas Batson. I thought this book would be an allegory or something so I shied away from reading it. But, it isn't an allegory, and is actually pretty amazing.

5. The Clockwork Three, by Matthew Kirby. The back cover makes this book sound a bit boring, but the cover art is pretty enough that I decided to check it out anyway. It turned out to be pretty interesting and well-thought-out -- a great steampunk story. (I know, that doesn't tell much, but it's been awhile since I read it and I can't get my copy back.)

6. The Guernsey Literary And Potato-Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The back cover and the decidedly peculiar acquaintance who gave me this book led me to believe it would be a really interesting story about World War II. It was boring. I couldn't get into it at all. So I skipped through to see if it got better, and encountered a graphic depiction of someone killing a cat. Anyone who knows me, knows this is the last straw. I slammed it shut.

7. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. Everyone was raving about this book one way or another. They all seemed to love it or hate it. I expected it to at least be interesting. After 200 pages struggling not to fall asleep, occasionally enlivened by some irritating negative comment or exasperating misinformation about my favorite place ever, I started flipping through, looking for the funny parts. IMO, Twilight would have been much better if it didn't take itself so seriously. There's so much potential for comedy in the idea that it's no wonder everyone makes fun of it.

8. Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. The back cover doesn't describe this story well at all! It describes Wizard Howl as "lecherous". I mean, what?

9. Monster Blood Tattoo Trilogy, by D. M. Cornish. (Why is this on every single list I write? Write about different books already, you say? Nope. These are just Too. Insanely. Awesome.) It was the title that confused me here. They were always on the shelf in the library, beckoning, but the name sounded alarmingly creepy, so I ignored them. In light of that, switching the name used for the U.S. versions was a fairly good idea, even though the new name ("The Foundling's Tale") isn't as interesting.

10. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Did anyone else picture CDs when they first heard of it? :P

Finding Angel by Kat Heckenbach

Storyline: Angel doesn't remember her magical heritage...but it remembers her. Magic and science collide when she embarks on a journey to her true home, and to herself.

Angel lives with a loving foster family, but dreams of a land that exists only in the pages of a fantasy novel. Until she meets Gregor, whose magic Talent saves her life and revives lost memories. She follows Gregor to her homeland...a world unlike any she has imagined, where she travels a path of self-discovery that leads directly to her role in an ancient Prophecy...and to the madman who set her fate in motion.

My Thoughts: After reading the sample on Amazon, I simply had to buy this book. Angel is a very fun character, and she's not even the best yet. (My favorite is Kalek. He's an Elven rocker. How cool is that?) I loved the setting. The peaceful island farm, the forest of magical trees, and the town that reminds me of a quieter, more Irish version of Hogsmeade, are such lovely places to visit between the pages of this book. The mystery kept me turning pages, and I finished this book much more quickly than I wanted to.

Angel's prophecy kind of confused me when it entered the story, but some of that was resolved by a re-read. I kept losing track of the words of the prophecy. It might not have been a problem had I been reading a real copy and not the un-flippable Kindle version.

The cover is very pretty, and suits the story in a way you probably won't guess.

Recommendation: Read this if you like magic and fairytales (and especially if you also like science!) Fans of Donita K. Paul's Dragon Keeper Chronicles might especially like it. Yes, there are dragons. :)

Author's site
Finding Angel on Amazon

Conundrums of "Twilight"

I visited Forks, Washington the summer I was sixteen, and adored it - I'd wanted to go to Olympic National Park ever since I knew it existed. It's soo beautiful. A few years later, I decided to read Twilight before I knew much more than the setting, just because I had loved the forest so much. (I found the book disappointing.) I lived in the Olympic Peninsula area for a summer a few years later, so I know a lot about the geography and what the place is like. We ate pizza in the diner in the exact same booth Bella and her dad do in the movie, without even knowing it. . . not sure how I feel about that. :P

Anyhow, I know lots of details in Twilight that are pretty ridiculous, and this one is my favorite.

In the book, as Edward drives Bella home from Port Angeles, he goes way over the speed limit, insanely fast, and says that he can do that because of his superhuman reflexes. (Let's try to ignore the fact that she went there because she wanted books. I mean, come on. UPS delivers in Forks! And the library's pretty decent, actually. They have books about local Native American myths and everything. I know, I know, I'm being too picky.)

source

Highway 101 between Port Angeles and Forks snakes along the shore of Lake Crescent in tight curves. It's narrow, has blind curves and crazy drivers from Seattle, and it's wet and slippery in the winter. There is no way at all any car, not even one driven by the Stig, could go 110 mph around those curves. Cars are heavy and affected by physics. The only way Edward could manage it is if he had a magical car. A special vampire car. One that can go intangible whenever it meets a normal car, so it doesn't crash. If that's actually what it was, that would be cool, but it's just a Volvo!

If Edward tried, he would end up in the lake. He might not mind, but Bella probably would. :P

It's no wonder they didn't try to put that in the movie, because special effects/computer animation would definitely be required. :D

Monster Blood Tattoo, book 1 - Foundling, by D. M. Cornish

The cover. So cool!

Storyline: Set in the world of the Half-Continent—a land of tri-corner hats and flintlock pistols—the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy is a world of predatory monsters, chemical potions and surgically altered people. Foundling begins the journey of Rossamund, a boy with a girl’s name, who is just about to begin a dangerous life in the service of the Emperor. What starts as a simple journey is threatened by encounters with monsters—and people, who may be worse. Learning who to trust and who to fear is neither easy nor without its perils, and Rossamund must choose his path carefully.

My thoughts: I LOVE this book. I first read it in 2010, just before Factotum (the third book) came out, and again just recently. With Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings, it's one of my most favorite series I've ever read. I don't want to compare them, though. This book is just as awesome, but completely different.

I like Rossamünd a lot, he's a wonderful character. He may be "too small and too meek" and have a girl's name, but he handles the things that happen to him with surprising bravery. The book has lots of interesting characters, but he's my favorite.

There are plenty of encounters with monsters, and some mysterious clues to revelations from the next book that are dreadfully curiosity-making. By the end of the book I was desperate to get to the library for the next one and find out what it all meant. (And boy, did it surprise me... but that's another review.)

The world is like steampunk, but really, it's biopunk. The inventions are fascinating and incredibly cool. There are lahzars, people who are surgically altered to have superhuman powers (they must pay for it all their lives). There are ships powered by engines made of muscles. The sea is caustic acid; and it's coldest in the south, because the Half-Continent is in the southern hemisphere of its planet. 

The concept of threwd has to be the single coolest invention I've ever encountered in a fantasy book. Think of that creeping feeling you get when you're outdoors and suddenly feel like you're not alone, like something is watching you, when there's nothing there. In MBT this is pretty significant. (No spoilers. You should read it and find out!)

Cons: To keep this review from being too glowing, I will mention a few things.

The first time I read the book, I was frustrated with Rossamünd for not realizing more quickly that the riverboat captain was lying to him. It drove me crazy. It makes sense to me now, but back then it was exasperating.

The rich language and wonderfully inventive words Cornish created I really like, and I had fun reading it, but some others might have trouble following and keeping track of meanings. There's an explicarium at the back of the book that helps with that, though. I used my dictionary app a lot while I was reading and enjoyed learning the new words. I'm a nerd, LOL. ;)

For parents, since this is a children's book: The author, D. M. Cornish, is a Christian, and while not being overtly religious at all, it feels right, somehow. There's nothing to object to here, unless you don't like the occasional invented curse word or something like that. (On the other hand, if you're not a Christian, you most likely won't notice any difference. It's in the eye of the beholder.)

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Top Ten Tuesday: Childhood Favorites

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

It was hard limiting this to just ten. :P

1. Animorphs. I LOVED this series of books. It was the first "sci-fi" I'd ever read that wasn't intolerably stupid. (It was ridiculous, oh yes, but it was the fun kind, not the stupid kind!)

2. Wayside School Stories, by Louis Sachar. I think there were three books like this, and I loved all of them, especially the stories about the missing 19th story.

3. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis. My favorite was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, especially the part where Eustace becomes a dragon, and is saved by Aslan.

4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J. K. Rowling. This one was the only one I had. I was banned from reading Harry Potter at one point, which I obeyed for awhile, since I only had one book anyway, but it didn't last. I was never exactly the most blindly obedient child. . .

5. The Babysitters' Club. I read lots of these, and I liked how funny they often were.

6. Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was always on the lookout for more of these, I only had two of them and read them till they practically fell apart.

7. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This was the first really long book (well, I thought it was long) that I read, and I still remember finishing it, sitting in my favorite pine tree. I SO wanted a secret garden of my own, so I went out in the woods and pretended I had one.

8. Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

9. The Magic Treehouse books. (These were when I was younger, most of the list has been coming from when I was 11 or so.)

10. My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George. I wanted to go out in the woods and make my own tree house, like the boy in the story did.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books On forestmaiden's TBR List For Winter

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Most of these I already have, or else hope to get on Kindle. E-books have won me over -- they're not exactly properly REAL, but you can have as many as you like without taking up any space, which is absolutely brilliant.

1. Replication: The Jason Experiment by Jill Williamson. I watched the book trailers for this and I'm totally excited, can't wait to read it!
2. The Fiddler's Gun by Pete Peterson. Again, this sounds too awesome -- the plot sounds like something by Lloyd Alexander, one of my favorite authors. And the Kindle version is only 99 cents. *jumps up and down* Do want!
3. Heartless by Anne Elizabeth Stengl. I'm very curious about this one, it sounds like a beautiful fairy tale.
4. North! Or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson. I've already started reading this one. A cool thing about books by Andrew Peterson is that, when he includes a song in the story, it reads like a true song and not just a regular poem, because he's a musician as well as a writer. Lots of fun wordplay here too.
5. From Darkness Won by Jill Williamson. I loved the first two books and I can't wait to see where she takes the characters next.
6. The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan.
7. Arrow by R. J. Anderson.
8. The Monster In The Hollows by Andrew Peterson. Obviously, after I finish N!OBE, I'll have to read this one. :)
9. Blaggard's Moon by George Bryan Polivka. Pirates! I just got this book, but my brother has it right now, and he'll probably finish before I even start (when does that ever happen? LOL).
10. Starfire: The Mending by Stuart Vaughn Stockton. Not sure what to say about this one. It sounds really interesting, though.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books To Read During Halloween

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Happy Halloween!

1. Lamplighter, by D.M. Cornish. I read this for the first time around Halloween, and it's very Gothic and eerie. Perfect! The first and third of the series are very good as well -- lots of monsters and fascinating characters. Factotum even has a masquerade ball.
2. Any Harry Potter, of course!
3. Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen. I love the scene where Catherine scares herself finding the mysterious note, only to discover it's a laundry receipt. It's the kind of thing I might do. ;)
4. Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones.
5. On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, by Andrew Peterson.
6. Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack, by Shannon Hale. After reading these and seeing all the beautiful art, I wanted to go out costumed as Rapunzel -- she's awesome.

That's all I can think of -- I didn't sleep much last night, and my brain won't cooperate.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time

1. The Lord of the Rings: the first fantasy I ever read and my favorite book of all time. The first time reading it was jaw-dropping amazing, and I wish I could experience the story with such fierce intensity over and over again.

2. Lamplighter, by D.M. Cornish: the first time I read this it drove me wild and scared me silly. (Shouldn't have been reading it so late at night, lol. :P) And the cliffhanger is a killer.

3. The High King, by Lloyd Alexander -- The surprises in this story were so beautiful.

4. Harry Potter. 'Nuff said. :)

5. Isle of Swords, by Wayne Thomas Batson -- I guessed the secret long before story's end, but it was (and is) still an awesome ride.

6. The Hunger Games -- I'm not sure I ever want to read it again. I don't think it's possible for me to enjoy a reread of this, and I really don't want to try. But it was very good the first time. :)

7. Curse of the Spider King, by Wayne Thomas Batson. This was loads of fun to read the first time, but for some reason, just isn't as interesting to read again. :(

8. Surviving the Applewhites, by Stephanie Tolan

9. Wings, by Aprilynne Pike: I like this one a lot, even though I don't usually like paranormal romance. But I've lived in Crescent City, and on my second read the occasional little inaccuracies in the setting stuck out and bugged me.

10. The entire Fablehaven series, particularly Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary, which has a twist so shocking it left me with my mouth hanging open for a full five minutes before I could go on reading. Very cool books, these. :D

A thought about The Hunger Games

It's not a really important aspect of the story -- but I find myself wondering where all the other districts besides the 12th are located, especially Rue's. I think District 11 is probably spread across Northern Illinois and Missouri, based on the variety of crops that are grown there without irrigation. If global warming made the seas rise, the Deep South would likely be mostly underwater, and what was left I'd bet would be too hot for human habitation, so it certainly wouldn't be there. If they use irrigation in Panem, it could also be in Oregon's Willamette Valley, Eastern Washington, or even part of Saskatchewan. The character of Rue and her fellow tribute seem to fit well with the current character of the Upper Midwest, though.