The Hunger Games

            For the sake of not spoiling anything for anyone, the first bit I’m going to write will be relatively spoiler free. I won’t give away any huge plot points, but I’ve gotta talk about some small stuff. If you don’t want to read spoilers, don’t read past my subtle note. You’ll know where to stop.            

            I finally did it. I finished The Hunger Games. I’ve gotta say, I was a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the books were fun to read, especially the first one. It was kinda like popcorn. You could just keep on reading and not really think too hard about it. Which is really great, considering the age group the books are aimed at. It throws some good metaphors at you, but then makes sure that the characters or Katniss’ inner narration explain it fully, Kind of like the way Dickens does It’s a great entrance into critical reading, and I hope a lot of people start to read more complex literature after they devour these books.

            The whole series had an Ender’s Game feel to it. An exceptional young girl thrown into a situation way larger than anything she thought she could handle. Taking huge risks? Add in some awesome fight scenes and a really cool battlefield, and you’ve got me convinced! Yeah, the first book was positively a BLAST to read. You begin to hate the evil puppet-master in the background, controlling the people of the Districts, smelling like blood covered up with roses, forcing children to fight to the death to pay for the supposed wrongdoings of those who lived over 70 years ago.

           

            The first book is fast-paced and never really leaves you waiting for action. It’s a little dystopian. That is, it’s like a warning about what could happen to our own future if we let things go to far, like Brave New World or 1984. The whole book is a fun ride, and we follow our heroine through quite harrowing circumstances. There’s a little bit of focus on boys, but not too terribly much, and it’s understandable, given her age. Most of the book focuses on what’s important – the battle for her own life. And it’s a blast reading it. The coliseum that Suzanne Collins has given her gladiators to fight in is diabolical. Not only do the fighting children – they’re called tributes in the book – have to worry about the other tributes trying to kill them, they also have to worry about the whole environment around them. It’s littered with booby-traps for the unaware. The entire book leads up to a chilling cliffhanger that promises more action, and perhaps even war in the future.

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            Catching Fire is where I started to lose a little confidence. It started off great. We see Katniss outside of the games for a little while, and it’s ok. She’s dealing with the sort of things you’d expect her to deal with – her memories, the people she’s killed, getting her life back to a semblance of normalcy. But we want the action. We’ve seen the creative genius of Collins in book one, and we know that fireworks are going to go off at some point. And then we get her great, new idea. The idea that’s going to top the coliseum and wow me again! A NEW …. Coliseum? Oh, we’re going back to the coliseum. Oh… ok.

           

            Now, I’m giving her less credit than she deserves. In her defense, the new design of the coliseum is BOSS. It adds somewhat more of a level of scariness to the whole field, and the fact that it’s not untrained kids she’s going to fight, but previous winners, really does add an extra bit of “Oh no, Katniss will never survive this one!” That being said… it’s a coliseum again. It’s the same idea as before. I don’t know if you guys liked it, but for me, it felt a little recycled.

            Beyond that, the second book is where Katniss really started annoying me with the whole love triangle deal. I thought more than once, “Wait, why do these boys like her again?” And then I realized that they don’t even know themselves. It’s literally just written that they love her for no real reason. In one it was just sort of an instant thing, and the other it just kinda happened gradually. There’s no real reason behind either boy’s passion. Which, you know, okay. That’s a view that you can have on love. It’s just not very convincing from my end. That’s not even my real problem. She goes back and forth SO OFTEN on these two. “Ooh, I have to pretend to love boy A, but I really love boy B, but maybe I owe boy A my love, but no, I do really love boy A he’s so so so so so amazing, BUT HE SUBTLY MADE FUN OF ME ONE TIME I DON’T NEED EITHER OF THEM, no wait, I need boy B, blah blah blah blah blah.” Is this a story about a political rebellion? Did I just pick up Twilight? What’s happening?

            Thankfully, this romantic meandering didn’t REALLY take all that much time, and there were still some cool fight scenes in the (recycled) coliseum.

            Then we get to book 3. Oh yeah, baby. Mockingjay. Here we go. We’re finally gonna see the huge civil war that has been building since book 1. I wonder how the fight scenes are going to happen in this. Is there going to be a lot of warfare? OH MAN COOL HOVERPLANES AND BOMBS AND COOL TECH-ENHANCED ARROWS. I’m in. I wonder what the battle to the Capitol is going to look like! Urban warfare. So cool. What’s Collins gonna throw at me this time?

            What? It’s… it’s just like the coliseums? The capitol…. made the streets…. exactly like the coliseums. Oh. Well…. Ok. As long as she makes it really cool, I guess. What? We don’t even get to see half the action? Even if Katniss wasn’t in the action, we can’t make her a single friend who can come back and at least tell us a cool story? Oh. Well. Ok.

            Even when she finally DOES go into battle, it’s mostly sneaking around, and not much in the way of confrontation. People start acting ridiculously! They just do what Katniss says because SHE’S THE MOCKINGJAY. People with legit wartime experience, bow to what she says, when she’s clearly demonstrated that she knows next to nothing about tactical warfare. Perhaps it’s because she’s a great public speaker.

            No, wait. Everyone in this book has said many times that she is NOT good at public speaking. She simply can’t come up with things to say on the spot. They don’t sound heroic, or loving, or anything. They just sound lame. She can’t do it. But… but then she does it? Several times? When the hospital is destroyed? When the rebel shoots her? Huh? I thought she couldn’t speak well. That’s just bad continuity.

            But by far, my biggest complaint about Mockingjay is that it ridiculously anti-climactic. The entire book, indeed, the entire series, leads up to a confrontation between the President and Katniss. It just HAS to be awesome. I’m willing to forgive everything else that annoys me if this just gives me what I want. The whole book just begs for an awesome fight between the two. But then, Katniss, who apparently hates this man with her entire being trusts him. She trusts his assessment of the situation. WHAT? The very worst part of it all is that we don’t even get to see him die. After 3 books and nearly a thousand pages, ONE line is given to his death. “Oh, President Snow? No one really saw what happened to him. I guess he was either trampled or he choked on his own blood. Anyway, he’s dead.” DONE. No more is said about that.

            Sure, maybe Collins was trying to show that things can become more complicated than the way they seem at first, but she didn’t do nearly a good enough job of exonerating him if she didn’t want to write his death. It was just one big letdown. As a reader, why am I reading all of this stuff about how evil Snow is, how much Katniss hates him, how he orchestrated all of these horrors when I don’t even get to see retribution for it. I felt like I was promised a nuclear explosion, but got only embers. The girl on fire must have gotten doused, because she was nowhere to be found by the end of that book.

            I’m being a little harsh, and I’ll admit, the books kept me turning the pages. It was an interesting read, definitely fun, and I don’t regret reading them. But they certainly do not merit a re-read. If you really loved these books, try Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, or 1984 by George Orwell, or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This first step that The Hunger Games provided into critical reading should definitely lead there.