Book Review: THE HUNGER GAMES

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

When I first heard about The Hunger Games, my first thought was that it was just a rip-off of the Japanese novel Battle Royale. Both involved a group of kids being forced to take part in a fight to the death, until there is only one victor left.

I wouldn't want to be in a Battle Royale with her,
the survivor of one year's Battle Royale

There are similarities beyond the fight to the death, of course. Both deal with a dangerous subculture – in the case of Battle Royale, its unruly teens deemed dangerous by the Japanese government. In The Hunger Games, it’s the districts that rebel against the Capitol.

But that’s about it, as far as the similarities go. Whereas Battle Royale focuses more on the gore and killing taking place on the island, The Hunger Games actually gives us more background about the situation and characters.

The Hunger Games is set in a dystopian future, when North America has been destroyed and is now split into twelve districts, ruled by the powerful Capitol. For the past 74 years, the Hunger Games have been held. The Games is an annual event in which one boy and one girl, aged 12-18, from each of the twelve districts are selected by lottery to compete in a televised fight to the death.

Collins spends a good portion of the story describing how the Games work and why they exist. The Games is meant to be a punishment for the districts for rebelling against the Capitol years ago, and exists as a reminder to the districts not to rebel again. The Capitol treats the Games as a festival, an amusing sport where they watch tributes mutilate and murder each other, and many citizens of the Capitol actually place bets on who they think will win. Not only that; the tributes are paraded around the Capitol, do interviews and are given training to prepare them for the Games. I appreciated how much detail and development Collins gave;for when I read the book, it felt like I was in an interesting alternate universe, and I was eager to find out more about it.

One minus I found was that even after the Games started, there wasn’t any real sense of urgency, which took away the intensity of the fight to the death. The protagonist, Katniss, goes around doing her own thing, hunting and looking for water. We’re not privy to much killing, and for a book whose focus is about a bunch of kids fighting to death, that seems a bit odd. However, I appreciated that Collins put in a lot of details about the Arena Katniss is in, and in describing Katniss’s life in the arena as she hunts for food and water every day. Not only is it well-described, it’s also quite realistic and interesting.

The characters also have their plus and minuses. Katniss, the protagonist and narrator of the story, is a stubborn girl with a strong will to live. I enjoyed reading her thought processes as she adapted to life in the Capitol and the Games. Katniss is a character that we can sympathise with –throughout the Games, she never actually wants to kill anyone, unlike the “Career tributes”, who join the Games to gain glory and honor and are trained since young to kill. Despite being the protagonist, she only kills one person, and it is out of self-defence and revenge (he has just killed her fellow tribute and friend, Rue). She’s also a smart character, smart enough to get out of several fixes, such as when she is cornered by the “Careers”, she manages to drop a hornet’s nest on them, or at the end of the book, where she manages to outwit the Gamemakers and successfully preserve the lives of fellow District Twelve tribute Peeta and herself.

Katniss - our female lead in Hunger Games

However, the male lead, Peeta, is not as enjoyable a character. Instead, he seems rather useless throughout the entire book – the only one instance he is of importance is when he distracts the “Careers” and saves Katniss from them. After that, he ends up being crippled and unable to move, and Katniss has to rescue him and nurse him back to health. In fact, Peeta can easily be distinguished as no more than “Katniss’s love interest”, which is not a good thing, especially when he is the male lead, and thus the second most important character. A little more character development would have done him a world of good.

The supporting characters, from Katniss’s rebellious best friend Gale, to the well-meaning but Capitol-controlled District Twelve escort, Effie, are all fun and amusing characters. The most distinctive of these supporting characters is Rue, a twelve-year old fellow tribute who eventually dies in what becomes the book’s most touching and saddest scene.

All in all, the Hunger Games is a fun, enjoyable read. It is an exciting ride, and readers who like Harry Potter or the Mortal Instruments series should check this series out as well.

Note: The Hunger Games is actually the first book of a trilogy, the second book being Catching Fire and the third Mockingjay.

Rating: 4/5

For ages 9 and above