The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Dec. 29th, 2008 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Winning will make you famous. Losing means certain death.
In a dark vision of the near future, a terrifying reality TV show is taking place. Twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live event called The Hunger Games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed.
But sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.
Essentially a mixture of The Running Man and Battle Royale, Katniss Everdeen is a 16 year old living in District 12 of a near future dystopia. Set in an America overcome by natural disasters so that only 13 Districts remain, each district is devoted to a particular industry (District 12's is coal mining) and is ruled from the Capitol. However District 13 rebels against the Capitol's brutal rule and is completely destroyed. As punishment for the uprising, the Capitol demands that each District send one teenage boy and one teenage girl to it to perform in The Hunger Games, a televised kill-or-be-killed game show where the sole winner takes home additional food and honour for their district and the losers are buried. When Katniss's sensitive younger sister Prim, is selected by random ballot to represent District 12, Katniss volunteers to take her place, travelling with Peeta, a baker's son who has been selected as the male tribute.
Although the idea isn't original, Collins gives Katniss a strong first person voice and seen through her eyes, the future is a dark and violent place. Despite the risk of descending into exposition, Collins strikes the balance between showing and telling with the result that her world building is vivid and credible, deftly setting out Katniss's struggle to survive in the economically poor District 12 following the death of her father in a mining accident and her apothecary mother's descent into depression. Katniss's salvation comes from the hunting skills taught to her by her father and she teams up with fellow teen hunter Gale and together they risk crossing the electric fence surrounding the District to hunt and gather in the forest outside. It's these hunting skills that Katniss will need if she is to survive the Game.
I liked the tension between Katniss and Peeta. Each knows that they may have to kill the other, but Peeta's declaration in a pre-Games interview that he loves Katniss creates a nice tension, with both Katniss and the reader never quite knowing if they can trust him of if it's just a tactic. Characterisation of both Peeta and Katniss is strong and believable, although the side characters of Haymitch (the only previous District 12 winner of the Games, who must guide the pair on their tactics and attract sponsors for them), Effie (a self-absorbed woman assigned to prepare the pair on their demeanour) and Cinna and Portia (friendly Capitol stylists who create a stunning look) are seldom more than caricatures.
Unfortunately Collins pulls some of her punches when it comes to the actual Game. As the first in a trilogy, the ending is never in doubt, but it's regrettable how she demonises the contenders from Districts 1 to 4 - showing them as Careerists who love the violence and are therefore deserving of their fate. She tries to off-set this with the small but wiley Rue from District 8 who teams up with Katniss in the Game, but it isn't quite enough. It's also notable how she's keen to make both Peeta and Katniss somehow blameless in the deaths they cause - by having them do it by accident or unintended consequence, or killing characters already shown as villains, which robs these scenes of some of their emotional impact. There are some nice scenes within the Game - notably when the survivors are hunted by a pack of strange dogs, but the manner in which Katniss and Peeta gain things they need from the sponsors sometimes skirts the line of contrivance.
That said, the book ends in a neat way with a good set-up for Book 2 that doesn't detract from the completeness of this story. Given the hints about the Avox's (prisoners of the Capitol who are forced to live in servitude with their tongues cut out) and the mystery about what happened to District 13, I look forward to seeing where Collins will take her characters next.
The Verdict:
Although not an original idea and despite the author pulling her punches with the actual Hunger Games, the execution of this book makes it worth reading, particularly the solid world-building and the strong first person voice given to Katniss as narrator. I look forward to reading the next in this trilogy.
In a dark vision of the near future, a terrifying reality TV show is taking place. Twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live event called The Hunger Games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed.
But sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.
Essentially a mixture of The Running Man and Battle Royale, Katniss Everdeen is a 16 year old living in District 12 of a near future dystopia. Set in an America overcome by natural disasters so that only 13 Districts remain, each district is devoted to a particular industry (District 12's is coal mining) and is ruled from the Capitol. However District 13 rebels against the Capitol's brutal rule and is completely destroyed. As punishment for the uprising, the Capitol demands that each District send one teenage boy and one teenage girl to it to perform in The Hunger Games, a televised kill-or-be-killed game show where the sole winner takes home additional food and honour for their district and the losers are buried. When Katniss's sensitive younger sister Prim, is selected by random ballot to represent District 12, Katniss volunteers to take her place, travelling with Peeta, a baker's son who has been selected as the male tribute.
Although the idea isn't original, Collins gives Katniss a strong first person voice and seen through her eyes, the future is a dark and violent place. Despite the risk of descending into exposition, Collins strikes the balance between showing and telling with the result that her world building is vivid and credible, deftly setting out Katniss's struggle to survive in the economically poor District 12 following the death of her father in a mining accident and her apothecary mother's descent into depression. Katniss's salvation comes from the hunting skills taught to her by her father and she teams up with fellow teen hunter Gale and together they risk crossing the electric fence surrounding the District to hunt and gather in the forest outside. It's these hunting skills that Katniss will need if she is to survive the Game.
I liked the tension between Katniss and Peeta. Each knows that they may have to kill the other, but Peeta's declaration in a pre-Games interview that he loves Katniss creates a nice tension, with both Katniss and the reader never quite knowing if they can trust him of if it's just a tactic. Characterisation of both Peeta and Katniss is strong and believable, although the side characters of Haymitch (the only previous District 12 winner of the Games, who must guide the pair on their tactics and attract sponsors for them), Effie (a self-absorbed woman assigned to prepare the pair on their demeanour) and Cinna and Portia (friendly Capitol stylists who create a stunning look) are seldom more than caricatures.
Unfortunately Collins pulls some of her punches when it comes to the actual Game. As the first in a trilogy, the ending is never in doubt, but it's regrettable how she demonises the contenders from Districts 1 to 4 - showing them as Careerists who love the violence and are therefore deserving of their fate. She tries to off-set this with the small but wiley Rue from District 8 who teams up with Katniss in the Game, but it isn't quite enough. It's also notable how she's keen to make both Peeta and Katniss somehow blameless in the deaths they cause - by having them do it by accident or unintended consequence, or killing characters already shown as villains, which robs these scenes of some of their emotional impact. There are some nice scenes within the Game - notably when the survivors are hunted by a pack of strange dogs, but the manner in which Katniss and Peeta gain things they need from the sponsors sometimes skirts the line of contrivance.
That said, the book ends in a neat way with a good set-up for Book 2 that doesn't detract from the completeness of this story. Given the hints about the Avox's (prisoners of the Capitol who are forced to live in servitude with their tongues cut out) and the mystery about what happened to District 13, I look forward to seeing where Collins will take her characters next.
The Verdict:
Although not an original idea and despite the author pulling her punches with the actual Hunger Games, the execution of this book makes it worth reading, particularly the solid world-building and the strong first person voice given to Katniss as narrator. I look forward to reading the next in this trilogy.
