Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset (original 2008; edition 2010)

I have always wanted to read these series of books as i have heard that it is very good. I have watched the movie version of the book and I've got to say it was quite good. It was very intense and definitely adventurous. But as they say, the books are always better than the movies which makes me want to read it even more. Almost all of my friends have read it and they said it was the book of the year. The hunger games is definitely a book to read.

Usually I don't find highly-hyped books to be equal to all the hype. They may be good, but they're usually not quite as good as the hype seemed to indicate. Not this series. I thought this series lived up to all the hype and then some - especially the first two books. It's a well-written, well-plotted, suspenseful story. I'm usually not a fan of dystopian-type stories; but with the exception of the last book (which is why I'm giving the series 3 1/2 stars instead of 4), this one grabbed my attention and didn't let go until the very last scene. If you're looking for a good series to read, this one's definitely worth checking out. ( )

After completing this reading of the trilogy, all together, I'd like to pull up something profound. They are, of course, thrilling stories, full of clever traps and slick evasions. They are also deeply moving stories, about the desperate people on the outside of rich society. As well, it is the story of one girl, deeply wrapped up in her own small community, who is forced to taken a broader view of her society and what it means. It's a story about how to stage a rebellion. Even more, it's a story about the high cost of war, and how none of the survivors ever stop paying. It's a reminder to not just question authority, but to question everything.

Reading it has left me sad, in a good way. ( )

Please note: Spoiler alert.

Although the three books in this trilogy (also includes Catching Fire and Mockingjay) were published separately, and although I found them unequal in terms of quality, they are so interdependent that I’m going to review them as one work. Also, I think the parts that make a real story would have (and should have) fit into two books.

In The Hunger Games, I thought Collins did a great job of setting the stage to make the games themselves credible in that version of reality despite the horror to ours. The writing is clean and never gets in the way of the story. The voice of Katniss, although believable, was a little too monotone for my taste; I wanted her to be passionate about something – anything. She wants the reader to believe she has deep feelings, but the tone is an unmitigated gray regardless of what’s happening or what Katniss tells us she feels about it.

Her trials in the first Games are riveting, although I do feel as though her victory by default (not doing much in the way of killing, herself) is a bit of a cop out when you consider the horrors the story wants us to take as same-old, same-old.

In terms of her supposed love life, she presents as a young woman torn between a man too good to be real and a man too real to be good. And it wasn’t clear to me why either man would want her.

Catching Fire was a letdown. Plodding, thick, it runs at a slow burn that doesn’t quite “catch fire” in terms of Katniss herself. The fire that (finally) catches is around her, not by her or because of her. She never shows anything as lively as a flame, herself. And as far as Coin is concerned, I couldn’t tell whether Collins intended for the reader to catch on that there was evil there or not, but I certainly saw it immediately. I would have preferred subtle foreshadowing that left some doubt in my mind. Then there’s the second Games… While Collins’ imagination is fantastic, the reasons given for this wild change in format for the Games are far from convincing, and I found my self saying, “What, this again?”

Prim comes into her own, which would be a good thing except that it happens so suddenly that we don’t see any development. All at once, she’s a young woman with talents approaching her mother’s as a healer? There’s so much time spent in this book on things that don’t matter, it would have been nice to see Katniss pay a little attention to the sister she offered her own life for.

Although the writing is still clean and still stays out of the way, there’s not much for it to stay out of the way of in this second book, which could have been told in less than half the space Collins gave it.

Mockingjay picks up the pace again, at least in terms of the action – though Katniss herself is still dull gray and olive drab. I found this book to be both more and less satisfying than Catching Fire. Finally things are happening. If only they weren’t so predictable.

As fugitives in the Capitol, Katniss and friends are not in the Games any longer; but so many of them die, they might as well be. It’s almost as though Collins doesn’t know what she’s going to do with them all if they survive. I found the flick-of-the-pen deaths of Finnick and Prim to be profoundly disturbing, and not in a way that I believe Collins would have wanted. The lack of feeling around these two separate events summarizes the dullness of Katniss herself. I felt cheated by the cavalier way in which they disappear – so much so that I had to reread the writing for both events to be sure that they had really happened, that these two characters we’re taught to love and respect are gone.

As for the ending, at least it was not quite Hollywood. I got the sense that Collins expects us to be shocked when Katniss turns her bow from the pathetic man she hates but who won’t live to see another week if she doesn’t kill him, to Coin, who was so apparently that man’s heir-apparent. The act itself, however, is perfect; it’s exactly what Katniss would do.

As noted above, I do give Collins credit for clean writing that puts the reader directly into the story and is immediate enough to appeal to teen readers without leaving adult readers out of the audience. And the colorful absurdities of the Capitol’s populace are great fun to imagine – an amusing (if obvious) poke at celebrity as we see it today, though I couldn’t help but be reminded of a similar class of individuals in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. ( )

Personally, I don't think it is as great as people say it is. However, it is definitely better than the movie (as most books are) and worth reading and it gets you hooked very easily even though it is a bit shallow. ( )