The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
**Note: a 4 year old book may get spoiled.
What is it about?
Set in a distant post-apocalyptic future, North America is now divided into 12 Districts and ruled by an evil oppressive government known as "The Capitol".
After the twelve districts had a failed uprising against them 74 years ago, The Capitol decided to hold a yearly event known as "The Hunger Games", where each year in a lottery, 1 boy and 1 girl from each district between the ages of 12-17 will compete in a fight to the death on reality TV. After her little sister is surprisingly chosen, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her place.
After the twelve districts had a failed uprising against them 74 years ago, The Capitol decided to hold a yearly event known as "The Hunger Games", where each year in a lottery, 1 boy and 1 girl from each district between the ages of 12-17 will compete in a fight to the death on reality TV. After her little sister is surprisingly chosen, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her place.
Who are the principle characters?
KATNISS EVERDEEN - Katniss is a strong-willed 16 year old girl who is an avid hunter and probably not the underdog to win that everybody thinks she is. I know I'm kind of a misogynist, but she's one of the most easily likable female characters you're going to read.
PEETA MELLARK - There's nothing that Hunger Games fans hate more than to be compared to Twilight, which apparently gives a bad name to all Young Adult books everywhere, but if there is such thing as a "Team Peeta" vs "Team Gale", I've always firmly been on Team Peeta. Peeta was always an all-around good guy from the beginning, and the flashback of how he helped Katniss years back ("the boy with the bread") makes him even more appealing. Throughout the novel, you know the rules say that only one teenager can survive, but you're always dreading whether Peeta has to be one of them.
GALE - Gale never did it for me. He's just some guy back home. And it always stuck with me that if he cared so much about Katniss, he just would have volunteered for Peeta from the beginning. They at least mention this in book 3, but don't give an adequate explanation why he didn't. It basically amounts to "Yeah, I forgot to do that."
HAYMITCH - Easily my favorite character in the entire trilogy, Haymitch is fascinating and funny. He was District 12's Hunger Games winner several years ago, and now is a raging, bitter alcoholic. The way he gradually grows to care about both Katniss and Peeta and serve as their mentor is one of the delights of the novel. He also has all the best one-liners.
PEETA MELLARK - There's nothing that Hunger Games fans hate more than to be compared to Twilight, which apparently gives a bad name to all Young Adult books everywhere, but if there is such thing as a "Team Peeta" vs "Team Gale", I've always firmly been on Team Peeta. Peeta was always an all-around good guy from the beginning, and the flashback of how he helped Katniss years back ("the boy with the bread") makes him even more appealing. Throughout the novel, you know the rules say that only one teenager can survive, but you're always dreading whether Peeta has to be one of them.
GALE - Gale never did it for me. He's just some guy back home. And it always stuck with me that if he cared so much about Katniss, he just would have volunteered for Peeta from the beginning. They at least mention this in book 3, but don't give an adequate explanation why he didn't. It basically amounts to "Yeah, I forgot to do that."
HAYMITCH - Easily my favorite character in the entire trilogy, Haymitch is fascinating and funny. He was District 12's Hunger Games winner several years ago, and now is a raging, bitter alcoholic. The way he gradually grows to care about both Katniss and Peeta and serve as their mentor is one of the delights of the novel. He also has all the best one-liners.
What's any good about it?
Well, you probably don't need to hear it from me because it's one of the most popular novels of the last 10 years, but I enjoyed it from beginning to end and pretty much finished it in about 3 days. What's truly great about it are of course the Hunger Games themselves, because the author does such a fantastic job of immersing us in this world.
We're right there along with Katniss, and it makes us wonder about strategy. What would we do if we were in these games, fighting to the death? The book is shockingly in depth with how the rules are enforced, and giving us an image of what past Games were like as well. Along the way, the narrative devices like a cannon going off to tell us when somebody has died works really well, and every night there is tension right along with Katniss as they project into the sky who has died during the day's events each night.
The fake-love-but-is-it-real-love-but-wait-it-has-tbe-fake-for-the-show-but-could-it-be-sort-of-real-love? subplot works very well also.
And the ending, at least to me, was absolutely heartbreaking from Peeta's point of view. As it should be. I'm a sucker for unhappy endings.
"One more time, for the audience?"
Do you have any complaints, you whiny bitch who complains about everything?
Not really. I kind of think Katniss is a bitch, but she kind of falls in line with most women in the fake way she treats Peeta for her own gain. This came off as very realistic to me. I honestly have no complaints about this book. It was entertaining from start to finish and every chapter ending makes you stay up an extra hour to see the next.
Best Scene
I always enjoyed the talk show beforehand where Peeta lets us know why winning The Hunger Games won't help him to get a date with the girl he has a crush on.
Final Thoughts
It isn't Twilight. I used to cringe when I would tell people that since The Hunger Games I have read several Young Adult novels, but not anymore. Twilight is a steaming pile of bullshit about a vampire who can somehow live in the fucking daylight because if he could only come out at night it would hurt the tissue-paper thin plot.
It's called Young Adult, so it makes you think that the only people reading it should be 9th grade girls with braces and diaries, but those girls can't enjoy a novel like this in the way someone my age or older can. It's kind of like when I used to watch Forrest Gump as a kid and no idea that Forrest actually ejaculated in Jenny's dorm room. I thought he just wanted to throw up. Yet I was still able to appreciate Forrest Gump on a certain level back then, and I appreciate it much more deeply today. And not just because the ejaculation scene throws things into a new perspective, either.
Anyway, this is a genuinely exciting novel with three-dimensional characters. I enjoyed the hell out of it and instantly ordered Catching Fire on my Kindle the next day.
Bobby Grade: A
Great Quote
"Motherfucker, you sending The Wolf? Shit, negro, that's all you had to say!"
---Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson), Pulp Fiction
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