Would You Survive the Games? A Violent Rip-Roaring Read and Perhaps an Ominous Glimpse into Our Future? American writer Suzanne Collins has given us a magnificent portrait of what contemporary SF suspense fiction can be—even if the suspense is for young adults and teenagers. The Hunger Games is an adult novel written for and starring children. The genre is an eclectic mixed bag, a potpourri of the best in futuristic, post-apocalyptic fare. It is a romance, a science fiction novel, action, adventure, danger, dystopia, some horror and a little fantasy (what with the exciting creatures like wolves and wasps) thrown into the mix. The plot concerns a contest in which 25 teenagers are placed in an arena (not unlike the ancient Roman gladiator fights) and instructed that in order to live all but one must die … at each other’s hands. And everything is televised world-wide. Survival tools and assorted weapons are given to everyone. And they are left inside the dome for a week or so to live by their wits and duel to the death. So the book is violent and bloody, even having a twelve-year old girl grisly killed. But in all the terror, and fantastical creatures like mutant wasps, birds, and bristling dog-like wolves featured in the finale, including fight scenes to compete with Ridley Scott or J.J. Abrams, The Hunger Games is not a horror novel but an examination of the depravity of man. Could something like this actually happen in future America? In the light of entertainment, it’s at least plausible. People are becoming increasingly more difficult to shock. Lust for fame and power is high. Our forms of amusement are slowly becoming more visceral, less tame. Example: In the 1960s, television censors wouldn’t show a pumping and gyrating Elvis Presley from the waist-down. Now it seems television HAS NO censors. Suzanne Collins has described how difficult the book’s writing was. Reality TV shows like Survivor and contest shows wherein people bid to get money and prizes, footage from the Iran-Iraq war—soldiers carting machine guns in whirling grit—the horrors of war, and the Roman clashes of old all served as a framework … not to mention Collins’ past growing up in Vietnam and the loss of her father at an early age. The novel’s themes to Suzanne Collins include tackling issues like “severe poverty, starvation, oppression, and the effects of war on others.” Even Christian themes like self-sacrifice, such as when Katniss takes the place of her younger sister in the Games. Peeta Mellark, a participant, exhibits a Christ-like affect when he is apparently killed, laid in a cave, and emerges with a total confidence that for the first time in Games history, two people can and will survive—a boy and a girl—namely he and Katniss. Do they win The Hunger Games, together? You’ll have to read. Panem is the continent where this story takes place, really the remains of North America after a series of natural disasters obliterated the cities and towns from the map. The name suggests the defunt airline corporation. The Capitol is a rich extravagantly luxurious cityscape, reminding me of the planet Corauscant from Star Wars fiction. When the book was published, it became the biggest phenomenon since Harry Potter. Bigger than the unappealing (at least to me) vampires of the Twilight saga—even Stephanie Myer lauded the book. But similarities between this story and the Japanese novel Battle Royale, Stephen King’s (who praised the book) novels The Running Man and The Long Walk—both concern contests and fights to the death—and Shirley Jackson’s (the woman who wrote The Haunting of Hill House) short story “The Lottery” where the same scenario happens (a pitched battle for justice) as in The Hunger Games. And who can forget another inspiration and precedent: William Golding’s first book and classic Lord of the Flies. The trapped teens, and mounting hysteria over who should lead them, and the threats to survival under duress, all play a part in a riveting tale set on a tropical island—The Hunger Games is set in a sealed, domed false-paradise. I think an avid reader could even go so far, to return to King’s work, to say his Needful Things and Under the Dome are repackaged “get out of that” story templates. So the concept is as old as the quills, thousands of years in the making, and it works fearfully, wonderfully well. Nevertheless, the book won many awards, which I feel were well deserved, including the New York Times Notable Book, Library School Journal’s Best Book, the Golden Duck Award, the Cybil Award, and more. Considering everything I have told you, should you read this book? Well, ultimately you will have to make that decision. Some people will just be wowed by The Hunger Games (I’m one of them) and others may be repulsed or turned off. The novel is intense even while not being overtly graphic. Like other phenomenon books including ones I like, like Harry Potter and Jurassic Park, the symbol of the Games is a “mockingjay”, a “jabberjay” cross-bred with a mockingbird fitted inside of a circular gold ring with an arrow shot straight through it to the left. This is on the pin clip owned by Katniss. And it’s a universally recognized marker, as plentiful now as the moth was in the early 1990s for the Hannibal Lector series. If you like part one ( the book is the first stanza of a trilogy) be sure to check out Catching Fire and Mockingjay. All three books forming a triad also by Collins have been adapted into major motion pictures starring “J-Law” (the actress Jennifer Lawrence, NOT that Lopez woman, whose music I don’t care for). In closing I want to impress you that while Hunger Games is NOT COMPLETELY ORIGINAL, it is an impeccably paced (each act contains nine chapters and nine acts exist in all three books—talk about organized! And THG is a good beach read if nothing more—you’ll finish it in a day or two if not sooner. It reads that quickly. So if you can stomach the idea of teens killing each other, by all means read this “cool” in the words of a fairly recent teen, little book.

REASON FOR BOOK CHOICE I am an aggressive reader now, for sure, but I didn't used to be. As such I found out about Hunger Games via a trailer on Apple.com. It looked intriguing and the main character had a lean and angry feel to her that I hadn't seen in a while. I like kick ass female heroines and the story seemed to tick all my desirability boxes. Then a few reviewers said the movie wasn't as great as it could be, so I passed and decided to wait for the DVD release. However, a couple of weeks ago I was trawling for a good book and I thought: Hunger Games, why not? I'm currently writing my own YA book and I thought that I should be pragmatic and check out the competition. I didn't expect it to be good, I certainly expect it to be great. It was just the new Twilight that I had to read because the world demanded it. COVER The cover for the Kindle version I purchased is the movie tie-in edition. I'm not sure what to think of that. I know that keeping your marketing material the same is a good idea, but would it be such an ask to have a unique Kindle cover that really takes advantage of its grey scale processing? We're not talking a single independent writer here, this is a professional squad. Surely they could design something that grabs you straight off from the get go. The cover itself is fine. It's Katniss' mockingbird on fire and I already knew it looked great in print at the local bookshop. In greyscale, however, not so much. All the vividness and contrast has been drained out of the picture; therefore, even though it's in super high definition, it doesn't grab me on the Kindle. It's also strange that the cover suffers from the 'blank space' issue a lot of books have around its left and right sides. I went off at Alan Parr last week about and I haven't changed my opinion. This is really lazy work and whoever put the book together for the Kindle should be spoken to about it. Yes, they would have to modify the file but it would be worth it. BOOK LAYOUT Even though the book still starts right into the novel (please, can we not do that?), I found it had all the essentials: TOC, chapter headings, acknowledgments and a really great way of promoting the next book. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of the way the TOC had been laid out and although I understand it's not the Kindle version creator's fault (because he / she was staying true to the source material) it really reeks of sloppiness. I can comprehend that fans of the novel would want it changed as little as possible from one version to another, but I'm not sure they would complain about aesthetic changes like chapter headings. I say this because the TOC chapter listings are 1, 2, 3 and so on. It works when you create a printed book because you can make those numbers really large but as TOC headings, it looks like an eighth grader put the table of contents together. Surely they could have changed them to One, Two, Three and kept the spirit of the book. One thing I love about the layout is their marketing. At the very end of the novel is a picture promoting the new novel: Catching Fire, and it's great. It let's you know that the other book is available, what it's called and it's not trying to force you to read anymore. I'm already thinking for picking it up in the Christmas period (or when I have holidays) to add to my list of reading material. STORY The story is pretty well known by now: Katniss has voluntarily put herself forward to compete in the Hunger Games so that she can save her sister from a likely death. This games are a survival tournament between the 12 different districts that is held in the Capitol and features participants from the ages of 13 (?) to 18. The main story: survival, is added to with the possibility of romance, audience manipulation and defiance against an oppressive regime. I loved it. I really loved it. The story arc is tightly wound and just goes up and up in its tension as the book progresses. I found Suzanne Collins totally ruthless as an author (for this kind of book she needs to be) and that was overwhelmingly refreshing for me as a reader. No-one is spared. Friendships are made because of the need to survive and then characters are dispatched as if the Hunger Games was happening in reality right now. There's no sentimentality in this book or inauthentic moments and that's what makes the story work because it feels as if you're right there every step of the way with Katniss and the other competitors. Also, the book ends. The Hunger Games end and that makes it a compelling (and fulfilling) read. CHARACTERS It's been a long time since I've read characters who I've cared about so deeply. I love Katniss and her strength, her confusion, her struggle with humanity versus survival. It's powerful, it's evocative and it made my heart jump more than once. She's a character that hasn't just turned up with a bow because that's what the author wants, she's a character who grew to use a bow because of her fierce determination to survive. I feel that things are going to go badly for her in the next two novels but you can't help but hope she makes it somehow. There's a great mentor in Haymitch who I hope will be fleshed out more in the second book, a complex and volatile love interest in Peeta, an uncertain ally in Cinna and a fascinating interviewer in Caesar. I think what I loved about all these characters was the fact that they arrive as real people. They have histories, secrets and their own goals Suzanne hasn't told us about yet. Nothing feels deliberately hidden in the book but you can feel it lurking beneath the surface and just waiting to explode. I think Cinna was probably my favourite outside of Katniss and I'm looking forward to seeing if he gets more space in the next novel. WRITING Wow. This is incredibly written. The end of the book says that Suzanne Collins explores the effects of war in her novels and you can feel that. She writes with a purpose and drive that I did not feel in Twilight or Switched. Everything feels stripped back, every word feels as if it should belong on the page and there's no fancy literary games to be played with the author. I felt as if Katniss was speaking to me directly all the way through. It's written in the first person perspective and in the present tense. I think the narrator is a little unreliable (she's only 18) but has a unique and strong voice that you can hear in each sentence on the page. After reading the big ones: Switched and Twilight, I'm pretty comfortable saying this is in a whole different league. There was nothing wrong with Stephanie Meyer or Amanda Hocking's writing ability in those books, but they were not at this level. Not this gripping, not with this strength of tone and force behind each word. It was like being kicked in the teeth and then pulled behind a chariot for three thousand metres. CONCLUSION Is it worth five dollars? Yes. Hell yes. I can't tell you how much of a relief it was for me to read Hunger Games. I really struggled through the last two books and thought that maybe I had lost my ability to enjoy well written novels because I was writing more myself. I wasn't. The last two books just weren't that good. Hunger Games grabbed me from the first page and held me until its bittersweet end. I started it at ten o'clock at night and finished the novel the next morning. It's about 80,000 words but it didn't feel like it. It felt so much smaller than the other two novels I had just read. I loved Hunger Games and it made me believe that there was some more Young Adult fiction out there for me. You don't need to like YA to enjoy Hunger Games, you don't need to like vampires, love torn women or any of the tropes of the genre. This is fiction at its finest with an immediacy that would have made George Orwell proud. -------------- Disagree? Think it's not that great? Believe I'm being too kind? Too harsh? Bounce over to my website and leave your thoughts in the comments section at [...]