THE HUNGER GAMES
The first word that comes to mind when I think of this book is thrills. Author Suzanne Collins does a phenomenal job of describing every detail of the book in such a fashion that I couldn’t put the book down if I tried. I stayed up all night reading it, and didn’t sleep a wink even after I had finished it. I spent as much time reading it as I did contemplating it afterwards. Remembering the story of love, death, loss, and tragedy kept me awake for hours, wondering, what would it be like if I was in that situation? Would I be able to survive to the end?
In the beginning of the book, you find out that what used to be called the United States has been turned completely into a TV-dominated dictatorship run from a city called the Capitol. The rest of Panem, the new United States, is divided into 12 districts (seeing as the former 13th had the bad judgment to revolt and no longer exists). And the highlight of each year is a nightmarish event called the Hunger Games, a bloodthirsty reality TV show in which 24 teenagers chosen by the lottery – a male and a female from each of the 12 districts – fight each other in a desolate environment called the “arena”. The sole winner gets a life of ease, the loser gets death. And the only unspoken rule of these horrid games is that you can’t eat the dead contestants.
The first word that comes to mind when I think of this book is thrills. Author Suzanne Collins does a phenomenal job of describing every detail of the book in such a fashion that I couldn’t put the book down if I tried. I stayed up all night reading it, and didn’t sleep a wink even after I had finished it. I spent as much time reading it as I did contemplating it afterwards. Remembering the story of love, death, loss, and tragedy kept me awake for hours, wondering, what would it be like if I was in that situation? Would I be able to survive to the end?
In the beginning of the book, you find out that what used to be called the United States has been turned completely into a TV-dominated dictatorship run from a city called the Capitol. The rest of Panem, the new United States, is divided into 12 districts (seeing as the former 13th had the bad judgment to revolt and no longer exists). And the highlight of each year is a nightmarish event called the Hunger Games, a bloodthirsty reality TV show in which 24 teenagers chosen by the lottery – a male and a female from each of the 12 districts – fight each other in a desolate environment called the “arena”. The sole winner gets a life of ease, the loser gets death. And the only unspoken rule of these horrid games is that you can’t eat the dead contestants.
Our protagonist, Katniss Everdeen (known as Catnip to her best friend, Gale) is a resident of District 12 which used to be Appalachia. She lives in a desperately poor mining community called the Seam, and when her younger sister’s name is chosen to be a contestant in the upcoming Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place. A very sketchy decision seeing as District 12 hadn’t one a game in at least thirty years. Complicating her already miserable situation is her growing affection for the other District 12 contestant, a clueless baker’s son named Peeta Mellark. And even further complicating her situation is her sorta-crush on her eighteen-year-old hunting partner, Gale. Gale isn’t clueless; Gale is smoldering, as said on page 14.
Then the Hunger Games begin; a violent, jarring speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense and may also generate a fair amount of some controversy. I wonder how they can categorize this novel as a “Young Adult” novel seeing as some of the kids in the Hunger Games are stung to death by monster wasps and others are eaten alive by mutant werewolves. Reading The Hunger Games is as addictive (and as violently simple) as playing one of those shoot-it-if-it-moves videogames. You know it’s not real, and yet you keep pursuing it regardless. And some parts of the book just flat out surprised me. Such as when Katniss needed burn cream or medicine for Peeta, whom she more or less babysits during the second half of the book, the stuff floats down from the sky on silver parachutes. And although the arena is televised by multiple cameras, Collins never mentions Katniss seeing one, which just adds to the mystery of the book.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Hunger Games, and would recommend it to everyone I know, though I’d advise only teenagers and up to read this book, only because of graphic images described, but I have no regrets whatsoever about picking up this book, and I am thrilled that The Hunger Games is only the first in the trilogy of three.
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