My sides hurt from laughing so hard at this chapter. Dido is pretty much what happens if you took Harley Quinn and threw her into a Hunger Games arena!

A Victor trying to make a break for it. Overturned carriages... my God! Luster truly is evil.

I howled with laughter at how you introduced us to a young Jade! She sure was as precocious as ever, even at only seven!

Do you think Bartimaeus would have returned home and married Viola once finally working up the nerve to speak to her? I would have wanted him to find love, and have someone love him back.

Mags meeting with the disguised Snow in a seedy bar on the edge of a mutt fighting ring had a certain Star Wars-esque ring to it. The way you create imagery with your prose is just that strong!

Mags sells her soul to create a Career camp...

The plot thickens... a story of intrigue and suspense that takes us far afield and drops us into a quasi-Western to look for clues.

Also, Bovina just casually hang-gliding off the Remake Center was SENDING me!

I remember being so frustrated when I somehow completely forgot that Brilliance was a boy instead of a girl! I've used your universe in some of my stories and I had to go back and make a few adjustments because of it.

It must be hard to find new, fresh arena ideas, since you re-used Thisbe's setting for this Games here. But it would have been nice to set Brilliance up in, I don't know, a cemetery. A true walk among the tombstones.

Poor Matty... so sneaky and so resentful because no one gave him the time of day. His colleagues must have figured he didn't really earn it, that his Victory was just handed to him. But no one could say he wasn't smart and devious. Truly evil to want to kill Katniss just to save his own skin.

But, like another District 5 tribute (the one he mentored, Foxface), Matthias got outsmarted by another, smarter tribute. A smarter Victor.

I can see Tigellinus and Antigone both kinda going 'OK, not a dude,' like that one guy did in Pitch Perfect! There was something very Darth Maul - Sith like about seeing Lyme slog through the Institute and the Trials. Maybe because the training of Careers under Boudicca seems so dark.

How did you get even blurbs of backstory for all 48 tributes from this Quell? An interesting approach. Sometimes it seems like we know all there is to know about Haymitch's past, but I think I would have also liked a chapter delving into his early years as a mentor, or even his childhood growing up in the Seam.

You make Plutarch extremely unlikeable in this. I don't even think Plutarch as Phillip Seymour Hoffman played him in the movies would have been this two-faced, especially against people he supposedly fought alongside. It was so delicious to watch Bovina kicking Coin around, and I think Jade really was telling the truth about being a rebel.

The shoot-out in the Training Center! Good grief, was that amazing!

I imagine that Victors of the same gender who won for the same district would sometimes have a special bond, like what we will see with Blight and Connor. Do you think Chevy would have taken a special interest in trying to guide Mitt after getting him out of the arena?

Halibut's win was the most edge-of-your-seat read for me. One of those where you'd be yelling at the TV screen if it was a movie. It seems like he's the Finnick before there was a Finnick. The men are only about ten years apart in age. Then again, maybe the age gap is bigger as Finnick was only 14 when he won. Finnick would have been a toddler - a mere three - here.

I think Phoebus has a low-key crush on Cecelia. I would too - she's only 25 here and already a young mother twice over. At the very least with what Blight says, maybe Phoebus could be bi-curious?

And Martinus Spickle is back! Why did you have to fatten him up, though? I get Capitol excess is meant to be disturbing, but poor guy... he's really let himself go...

Circe just seems so beautiful with her long, red hair! A Kaitlyn Dever type - that would be my fantasy casting! This chapter is one of the best with a look at the art of escorting, and a truly spooky arena in the farmlands and farm house!

I bet Chaff was really bummed that he didn't get another male Victor in his boy. Top Two heartbreakers are always hard for the loser, but there can only be one...

You're really good at writing song lyrics. That sea shanty at the beginning was fun! If only we knew the tune to go with it...