The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

[Werthead]

Book 1: The Hunger Games

Over a century from now, North America is a land ravaged by floods and war. Out of the ashes a new nation, Panem, has emerged, consisting of the glorious city known as the Capitol and twelve outlying districts which only exist to provide the Capitol with resources (a thirteenth district was destroyed in a rebellion three-quarters of a century ago). To keep the people in line, the government enforces the Hunger Games, a reality TV show where twenty-four teenage boys and girls must fight one another for survival in a game of wits and strength.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take the place of her sister when she is selected for the Games. Transported to a hostile wilderness, Katniss must use every bit of her cunning and her training as a hunter to prevail.

The Hunger Games is the first book in the trilogy of the same name. First published in 2008, it has become a hugely successful novel, spawning two sequels and a forthcoming movie adaptation, and has won plaudits from both younger readers and adults alike (Stephen King is a noted fan).

The premise is unoriginal but Collins nevertheless executes it reasonably well. This is a brisk read where Collins develops the plot and delivers action beats with skill, but not at the expense of characterisation (though, with only two characters of note to develop, this isn't as challenging as it could be). Katniss is an intriguing but more interesting is the way that Collins establishes the motivation and character of Peeta, Katniss's sometimes-ally in the games, since we only see him through Katniss's eyes. Characters outside these two are less well-developed, however.

Collins also holds back on exploring the full savagery of the games, perhaps understandably given the target audience. Still, there is the feeling that we more hear about how horrible the games are rather than seeing them in full flow (one tense moment involving mutated dogs aside). In addition, we know very little about the other contestants. A couple get some nice moments in the sun so we feel bad when they die, but generally the focus of the game itself is the mental battle of wills and PR that Katniss and Peeta are playing with the people running the game. This is surprising and considerably more difficult than just showing the contestants offing one another, since this struggle can only by necessity be depicted through one side, since we only have Katniss's POV, so we, like her, can only guess what the people in the Capitol are up to. To Collins' credit she pulls it off, and works in a couple of interesting themes about reality TV, bloodsports, PR and marketing into the bargain.

The book does have a potential problem in that it does come off very much like a Battle Royale-lite. Whilst that's not a problem if you've never read or seen Battle Royale, if you have then the weaknesses of The Hunger Games become slightly more apparent. Most notably, whilst Collins' Games are cruel, they don't match the shocking harshness that Royale achieves by simply having all the contestants be in the same school year, meaning they've known one another for years before having to kill one another. In that sense, Koushan Takami scores higher with some of the things he wants to say about youth and teenager-hood being a Darwinian struggle for survival. At the same time, the two works, whilst stemming from the same basic idea, are aimed in rather different directions and Takami benefits from a much greater word-count and a more adult audience to work with, so comparisons between the two are fair only up to a point.

Moving on from that, The Hunger Games (****) is a fast-paced, enjoyable read with some interesting (if hardly revelatory) things to say about celebrity and PR, not to mention a counter-intuitive approach to the inevitable romance story, but suffers a little from the well-mined premise and patchy characterisation. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

 

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Book 2: Catching Fire

Having survived the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is back home in Sector 12, not looking forward to her role as a mentor for the next year's games. She is surprised to hear rumours that her defiance of the Capitol and President Snow during the Games has sparked unrest and even discord in other sectors. When she and her co-winner, Peeta, conduct a tour of the districts, Katniss realises that her name and her emblem, the mockingjay, are being taken up as a symbol of rebellion and hope.

Determined to crush Katniss's influence, Snow arranges a special new Hunger Games event for the 75th anniversary of the games. All the living winners of the games must return to the arena for a fresh battle...

Catching Fire is the second volume of The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins' highly successful, post-apocalypse, dystopian YA SF series. Collins never intended to write a trilogy, so Catching Fire has some work to do to set up a bigger storyline that will be resolved in the following novel, namely the move from merely being a story set in a dystopia to a more epic story about the overthrow of the oppressive government.

For these reasons Catching Fire has some issues. We're more than halfway through the novel before the second Hunger Games kick off, and we're not able to spend much time with those games before the conclusion arrives. This is a shame as Collins addresses some of the weaknesses of the first set of games, with many more contestants being identified and much better-characterised than first time around. The arena is also far more ingenious, with many more deadly traps. The games section of the novel and the conclusion are both rushed in an attempt to cover as much ground as possible before the final novel, which hurts the quality of this book.

That said, it's still a fast-paced, readable and enjoyable book. We see more of Panem and get more of a sense what life is like for people living there, which is essential to better-establish the wider backdrop of the series. On the characterisation front, Katniss isn't always a sympathetic protagonist and often makes mistakes, which makes her more relatable and real. Other characters, like Peeta and newcomers like Finnick, are also given some solid scenes and character-building moments. The mutual hatred and anger between Katniss and President Snow is also well-handled. However, the Capitol and its rulers are rather dense in this book. Everything they do seems designed to inflame the situation and further the rebellion, which is weird for people who've been in charge for a century and have used the Hunger Games as a form of propaganda and control for seventy-five years, which requires some savvy knowledge of media and PR. Instead, the plot feels set-up ahead of time and both the reader and the characters are along for the ride.

Catching Fire (***½) is a drop down in quality from The Hunger Games, but still an enjoyable and entertaining novel. It is available now in the UK and USA.

 

[Werthead]

Book 3: Mockingjay

The districts are rebelling against the Capitol, united by the symbol of the Mockingjay. Katniss Everdeen, the symbol of the rebellion, is now living in the secretive District 13 where she finds that she is to be used as a figurehead to bring President Snow down. However, Katniss is unhappy with the demands being put on her, and also with the fate of Peeta, now a prisoner of the Capitol. As two sides prepare for a final confrontation, Katniss has to ask if her new allies are no better than the enemy they seek to destroy.

Mockingjay brings the Hunger Games Trilogy to a suitably bloody and epic conclusion. Though it has to be said it's also a somewhat rushed and predictable conclusion.

As mentioned in my review of Catching Fire, Collins wasn't planning for this to be a series, so had to scramble quickly in the second book to lay out a larger and more epic story. Whilst laudable, this effort was flawed because the story wasn't originally set up that way, and so many new characters and concepts had to be introduced in Book 2 that the actual plot of the book, Katniss fighting in a second Hunger Games, was fairly rushed. That problem extends into Book 3. Whilst the possibility of District 13 was first voiced in Book 2, we don't see it until Mockingjay. This means that in the space of a 430-page, large-typeface novel, Collins has to set up a whole new faction with its own cast of characters, ideology and goals, then bring in the existing cast and have them interact, then have them unite for the final assault on the Capitol, and then examine the issues raised by these storylines.

Collins does a credible job, but it's clearly not ideal. If the series had been planned as a trilogy from the start, District 13 and its dubious rulers could have been introduced and established earlier. Katniss's relationship with them and her lack of respect for authority, even an authority trying to achieve her long-term goal of destroying President Snow's regime, makes for a solid storyline, but it is under-explored here. In fact, the book is so packed that lots of elements are under-explored, and characterisation suffers. In particular, Finnick lacks the flair and fire he showed in the previous novel that made an interesting character, whilst Peeta comes across badly. Katniss continues to be a more complex heroine than expected, but most of the other characters suffer (and Coin, the head of District 13, is a bit of a two-dimensional figure at best).

On the plus side, the rapid pace means that the book is certainly action-packed, and Collins has some ingenuity in coming up with more weapons for the Capitol to deploy against the rebels. There's also a nice contrast between the deadly serious final attack on the Capitol and the Hunger Games of the previous two novels. This is also a harsher novel: Collins is pretty ruthless with some characters and it's definitely a bloodier book where Katniss has to do some more morally questionable things that in prior novels, which raises the stakes and the tension in the ramp-up to the finale.

Mockingjay (***½) is a readable conclusion to the series, though the rushed pace hurts some aspects of it. However, the series is brought to a solid-enough conclusion, if a reasonably predictable one. The book is available now in the UK and USA.