The Hunger Games

This YA series makes some of the others (like Divergent and Maze Runner) look like they were written by children. It doesn't feel amateurishly planned and written, and it has a sense of maturity that most other YA novels don't have. The story feels... tangible. The themes are realistic, and the characters are complex. Suzanne Collins makes the reader truly understand them and what they stand for. They aren't just plot devices meant to propagate the story. They feel like living, breathing people trying to survive in a horrible world.[return][return]The plot itself is amazing. It's a very simply concept (having a bunch of teenagers fight to the death in an arena for the whole world to watch), yet Suzanne Collins makes it seem like it show more could genuinely happen in our world. The political themes of control and class discrepancy make the story all the more believable. In addition, not everything is about surviving until the next day (unlike the Maze Runner franchise). Katniss Everdeen's never-ending concerns about her loved ones' safety and about standing up to the Capitol contribute to making her story one hell of a read. Even after the tributes are dead, the Games aren't. Katniss has to continue to playing the Capitol in order to ensure nothing happens to the people she loves. The "political thriller" aspect of this franchise made it SO MUCH better than if it were an simply an action novel about a fight to the death in a massive arena.[return][return]The Games themselves are extremely well-paced and entertaining. Famine, thirst, violence, and even fireballs of death all contribute to making this a brutal survival story. Danger is at every corner, making the suspense of the reader shoot through the roof. I dare anyone to read this story for the first time and not get nervous at what's going to happen next. [return][return]I do still have a few problems with this book, though. While the section of the book involving the Games themselves is well-paced, the sections before and after do drag sometimes. There is a lot of preparation before the Games begin, including a ton of food, fashion, and interviews, and I do wish Suzanne Collins paced these sections a little better. Obviously, it isn't all useless as there are lots of games to be played in order to gain sponsors and keep the Capitol pacified, but it still feels quite slow at times. Also, the book is quite monotonous in terms of its writing style the whole way through. It honestly seems like the narrator is bored telling it at times, but I'm not too pressed about it; it doesn't mean the story itself is boring. show less

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel to The Hunger Games that follows a young Coriolanus Snow long before he becomes the president of Panem. The story is set during the Tenth Hunger Games, a time when the Capitol is still recovering from war and the Games themselves are far less polished and grand than they are in the original trilogy. Instead of a spectacle of wealth and power, the early Games are harsh, awkward, and unstable, with the Capitol trying to figure out how to turn a brutal punishment into a controlled public event. The novel shows how Coriolanus, who comes from a once-powerful but now struggling Capitol family, is desperate to restore his family’s status, survive socially, and earn a future for himself. His show more ambition is strong, but so is his fear of failure, and that mix drives much of his behavior.

Coriolanus is assigned as a mentor for one of the tribute participants, Lucy Gray Baird, a girl from District 12. At first, Lucy Gray seems like an unlikely tribute to inspire confidence. She is slender, unconventional, and clearly underdog material in a system built to favor the powerful. But she is also clever, charismatic, and captivating in ways Coriolanus does not expect. When she performs at the reaping and later in the arena, she immediately shows that she understands how to command attention. Her talent for singing and her ability to charm a crowd make her stand out in a Games environment where survival is not only about strength, but also about performance and image. Coriolanus quickly becomes fascinated by her, and the relationship between them grows increasingly complicated as he tries to balance his genuine attraction to her with his own ambition.

The novel is not simply about romance or survival. It is about the formation of power, morality, and cruelty. Coriolanus begins the story still capable of warmth, compassion, and even idealism, but he is also deeply shaped by fear, pride, and the belief that the world is a competition where winners get to define the rules. His family’s poverty makes him resentful and insecure, and he constantly worries about being exposed as less than the polished Capitol boy he pretends to be. He is deeply concerned with appearances and deeply invested in the idea of restoring his family’s name. These pressures influence his decisions throughout the novel, especially when he starts to believe that helping Lucy Gray could bring him personal gain. What begins as a strategic connection slowly becomes something more emotionally real, but even then, Coriolanus never fully stops thinking about what the relationship means for him.

Read full book summary at Booksdata.org show less

Great dystopian book (and series). Unlike a lot of YA dystopian fiction (which this book unfortunately got lumped into), it feels very realistic and compelling. The motivation of the characters, depiction of a revolution, and character decision-making was realistic and well-portrayed. The subject matter is never treated disrespectfully but with a sort of horrific tone at the normalcy of the games. The way the games are run feels like a dark twist on a lot of today’s reality tv, which adds to the realism. And even though the main character running the revolution was a teenager, it never felt like she an unexplainable amount of power for her age (a problem which a lot of YA runs into).

This is the best book I read this year. Two thumbs up! Highly recommended. Why? Combine "Battle Royale" with teen dramas on the WB (with a little "The Running Man" thrown in) and watch the awesome. I've never seen a novel with a stronger beginning - the environment and backstory is established immediately, there's tension from page one, and the story has started before the end of the chapter. You've got a doomsday clock going, high stakes, and not much thinking. And the whole story is totally relatable to high school - I'd almost call it allegorical.

The story's composed in three parts. The first part is where we see our main character, a teen called Katniss living life in the slummy District 13, where starvation and poverty is standard show more fare. Part two occurs after she's chosen to participate in the District Games, which is essentially Battle Royale minus the backpack & collars and plus the rivalry, because whoever wins gets set for life (although evidence suggests you never live down the scars). This part is where my "The Running Man" reference comes from, because we see the pre-interviews, the training, and the media circus surrounding this young girl. It's where the high school allegory shines brightest.

First people judge you on your appearance. Then you're judged on your chance for survival and given a score, but not told the criteria on which they judge you (may this be like the elite clique giving you your place in the world?). Then you give an interview, but it's Hollywood hype - it's giving people a personality they want to see. Some play the psycho tough, others play the cunning fox. You see, the purpose of this media circus is to get people to like you. If they like you, they might buy you something during the games - food or weapons or medicine. So you've got to get yourself a personality, an image, and suck up to those fans. And it tears Katniss up because it's the opposite of what she is, a hard-working, bitter hunter from the coal-mining district. Now she has to be a dizzy damsel in unrequited love with her district partner. You can never be yourself in this game.

But here the initial inertia fades as the anticipation of the battle seeps through every word. Flashbacks to her life in District 13 try to build her character and romantic tension between her friend and her District partner (who she may have to kill at some point). There's a great deal of her thinking on this, on the consequences of her actions, and what this means to her survival and future relationships. It's not really a problem, because you always want to see what happens next, but it feels like padding.

Then we get to part three - the battle. Here it gets really introspective, because Katniss is on her own, clinging to the trees and looking for food, as she tries to play both the battle game and the media game (the audience is watching her every move, and could decide whether she lives or dies). It unfolds realistically, which is sort of the trapping of this story. Katniss does a lot of wandering, a lot of thinking, a lot of worrying. That's what you'd expect, but it doesn't move the plot much. You find yourself hoping to get to the end of the chapter, where you know something interesting is going to happen. But something interesting always happens. And you watch her alliances and enemies and actions have dire consequences as the plot moves along, and all Katniss wants to do is get out alive, compromising her values and hurting people as she does it.

Then some mutant dogs made out of dead competitors attack them.

Ahem.

All in all, this is a definite must-read. I'm sure someday we'll recognize Suzanne Collins and Scott Westerfeld as the mother and father of modern YA science-fiction. show less

The genius of Suzanne Collins to put together this political and social commentary work of fiction AND still make it entertaining as fuck for teens

I hate a lot of things: I hate spiders. I hate how weak I am when it comes to chocolate. I hate my dog's flatulence issue. I hate how people call James' "Jimmy" and Richards "Dick". I hate it when people tell me "what a beautiful day!" it is. I hate boys who wear flip-flops and girls who wear short skirts in the middle of winter. I hate cabbage.
Really, my list is probably as long as the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis....Or longer. But that's not the point. The point is, out of all those things, which is the thing I hate the most? Spiders, easy. I will scream like a girly-girl, cover myself in seaweed, eat cabbage, and tell someone "what a beautiful day!" it is before ever touching a spider. I'd also hide in the show more frozen depths of Antarctica after doing all that. However, there is something I hate just as much as spiders. What's that, you ask? Well, it's just got to be reviewing books I love.

You see, despite my love for all things apocalyptic and kick-ass, I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to dystopia. So you'll forgive me when I tell you that at the beginning of this year I was saying, "The Hunger wha?" I'd seen the title pop up in forum discussions. I'd seen the covers plastered all over blog posts. I'd heard the cyber squeals all the way down under as girls declared to be "Team Gale!" or "Team Peeta!" Reader friends started screaming at me that this is a must-read series. So of course I wanted my slice of the Hungry Game pie. Sorry, sorry - the Hunger Games!
What did I do? Bought all three books without knowing what they were even about. Yeah, that's right. I took a big, fat bite of my slice...and then ate the whole pie.

The book became a permanent fixture in my hands; my fingers hovered just-so above each page, ready to flick in a nanosecond as not to miss a single moment. I skipped mealtimes so I didn't have to sit it down for an extended period of time. I ignored my friends. I started speaking in makeshift sign language to my family. I looked up, shocked, as 2 PM became 2 AM. What has become of me?! Nothing. I am the hermit; the Hunger Games is my shell. Watch my tired eyes twitch, look at my malnourished veins, and there, right there! Did you see it fly past? Yes, that was my social life.

Collins is one of the most persuasive writers on the market, so persuasive that I sold my soul to her in the opening pages. She can make you believe anything. This dystopian future of meaningless massacres deemed useful by the screwed-up political system? Doesn't make sense. Buuu-ut...throw in a twinkly-eyed, kind-hearted baker’s son who can ice cakes better than your grandma, add some tremendous amount of graphic violence inflicted and suffered by minors, and then a little clichéd love triangle and readers worldwide are eating out of your palm!
To be honest, there wasn't much I didn't like or wasn't entirely impressed with. Collins has created a literary tidal wave and I'm just one of millions who have my face buried in her palm, scouring for crumbs. And that's all that matters - what you think. Nobody else, just you. Discover what it means to you, form your own opinions, and fast, because this franchise is expanding and scheduled to EXPLODE next year.
In the end, maybe I fell into the tidal wave or maybe the tidal wave hit me, either way, this is something I'm happy to be drowning in. show less

Imagine a place where the vast majority of resources - energy, agricultural, technological - are reserved for the use of a privileged group. A place where those who labor to create or harvest those resources - the miners who extract the coal, the field laborers who harvest the food, the factory workers who build the computers - live in abject poverty, unable to benefit from what they produce. Imagine that past rebellion against this state of affairs has been crushed by those privileged few, with their superior weapons, and military might. Imagine that these are a people who enjoy watching horrifically dehumanizing games, televised into their comfortable homes. Finally, imagine that this is a society in which children - always so show more vulnerable to the adults around them - are brutalized, given weapons and set loose in a hostile world - forced to fight and to kill, in order to stay alive.

I don't know about you, but I don't have to work very hard to imagine it. And while this place can be found within the pages of Suzanne Collins' brilliant dystopian young-adult fantasy novel, The Hunger Games, where it is called Panem - a nation that rose from the ashes of a future North America - it can also be found in the pages of the annual Human Rights Watch World Report. It can be found around the corner, and around the globe, right here and now, in this "real" world in which we live. And that, of course, is the brilliance of Collins' work, and of this genre.

Dystopian fiction - the best of it, anyway - doesn't just offer us a cautionary tale, a portrait of what could be. No, it also offers us a mirror, a glimpse of ourselves, as we are now. It may be that this mirror distorts, and that we see but darkly. But for every distortion, for every detail of the real world that is occluded or transformed, some deeper truth is revealed. In the real world, there isn't one wealthy Capitol, and twelve impoverished Districts. But there are areas of vast affluence and influence, whose inhabitants experience a plenty unimaginable to many of their fellow human beings. In the real world, we don't hold gladitorial games in which children (known as "tributes"), ranging in age from twelve to eighteen, are forced to battle one another to the death, as a form of demoralizing punishment for their elders. But we do use hundreds of thousands of children as soldiers, arming and often drugging them, using them as tools - both practical and psychological - in adult conflicts. (See the website of Child Soldiers International, formerly The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, for more information on this most pernicious form of child abuse).

So when my fellow readers and reviewers describe the premise of The Hunger Games - that the twelve Districts of Panem, subjugated by the impregnable Capitol (located in the Rocky Mountains), must each supply two tributes, one boy and one girl, to compete in the eponymous (and deadly) Hunger Games - as "implausible" or "uncivilized," I wonder what book they've been reading, and what world they're living in. Don't mistake me: I too found the premise barbaric, but I was struck, again and again, in the course of my reading, by a powerful sense of recognition.

I was also, in the course of my reading, so intensely involved that I was all but lost to the world. Collins' story isn't just a powerful, thought-provoking allegory, after all, but an intensely exciting adventure story! The heroine, Katniss Everdeen, is admirably complex: smart enough to find a way to feed her starving family (through illegal hunting), but completely clueless as to her fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark's feelings for her; strong enough to volunteer, in order to spare her beloved younger sister, Prim, but vulnerable enough to weep for one of her fellow tributes, in full view of the cameras; practical, and determined to use the rules of the game to her advantage, but also, in her own way, willing to risk everything to do what is right.

I loved everything about this book! I loved the fact that Collins made me think: about issues of exploitation, choice, and survival; and the possibilities of maintaining identity, under the most horrific of circumstances. I loved the story itself, which just grabbed hold of me, and never let go; I loved the heroine, with her many contradictions; and I loved the supporting cast, from the faithful Peeta, to the quietly compassionate Cinna. Finally, and perhaps most of all, I loved that in the midst of this dark tale, Collins did not exclude hope entirely, that she demonstrated that the best of the human spirit - its nobility, compassion, love of right, defiance of injustice - survives even in the most trying times. As Katniss reflects to herself, in a tragic scene in which one of her fellow tributes (victims) has been killed, and she is faced with the decision of how to arrange the body:
"I want to do something, right here, right now, to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is a part of every tribute they can't own. That (...) was more than a piece in their Games. And so am I."

Bravo, Suzanne Collins! A brilliant first entry in an exciting new series! I cannot WAIT to read installment two! show less