The Hunger Games
I ask my daughter to try to read one book a month and since she finished all the “The school for good & evil” series, we started looking for a new series for her to get into. Well, thanks to the magic of Youtube, she heard about the Hunger Games and wanted to read it. I happily got the book off Libby and started reading it with her.
I never read the Hunger Games at its peak MOSTLY because i thought its a rip off of the Japanese series “Battle Royale” which was both a comic and a series of movies. When I watched the Japanese Movie, I thought it was a fairly good take on a Lord of the Flies novel, with its own unique Japanese perspective. The Hunger Games came out not soon after and I dismissed it as just another rip-off of the whole “teenagers kill each other” theme.
Well, after I’ve finished the book, I can say that I was wrong. Its got nothing to do with the Japanese series other than the central theme of “teenagers killing each other for the entertainment of adults”, and the Hunger Games is super focused on its protagonist and you never see the perspective of any of the other participants.
The world building is about as nonsensical as the one in Battle Royale and frankly, any society where they sacrifice their youth for battles to the death for the entertainment (or “protection”) of a society is just plain stupid. If you look at any established fighting sports or even just regular sports, the teenagers are almost never interesting to look at. They might have the athleticism and youth at their side, but they won’t have the ability to strategize or make great tactical decisions that only come from age. So other than the conceit of using teenagers, the actual idea of using teenagers for a fight to the death is usually going to end up pretty boring. The Hunger Games are silly for that reason, but we’ll forget about that for the rest of the review.
The book focuses solely on the heroine, Katniss, who is both an accomplished huntress as well as a good enough survivalist. She has been taking care of her sister and mother since an unfortunate incident left them without their dad. Her sister got picked for the Hunger Games, so of course, Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place. Then you get to the rest of the world where the Hunger games take place. The world is a bit nonsensical, where you have 12 districts and a capital. Apparently a long time ago, the districts rebelled and lost and the capital has been demanding an annual tribute of one boy and one girl, aged 12 to 18 to participate in these games as punishment for their rebellion. The winner gets to live in luxury as apparently all the districts are poor in compared to the capital.
The book tries to make out how ridiculous the whole pageantry of the show is. It has the trappings of the superbowl, the world cup and olympics rolled into one. There are sponsors and advisors for each districts team, and there are skill demonstrations whereby the game’s masters will decide what weapons and supplies to be dropped into the games.
The rest of the book is about the free for all that ensues once they get dropped into the game. That part is actually LESS interesting than the world building that goes before this part. The actual game devolves into a bunch of folks lurching towards the supply, while the plucky and tender hearted heroine manages to survive and through sheer perseverance and cunning, manages to get her way throughout the games.
I think part of the reason I lost interest in reading the book is mostly that you know how the book is going to end, perhaps not all the details, but there’s never any doubt who survives. Contrast that with a movie like Battle Royale or Lord of the Flies, where there’s really no protagonist and you get the perspective of everyone, you never know who’s actually going to win.
By making the situation mostly one dimensional, the authoress lost a lot of what would make this an interesting premise. And that’s really too bad.
The kid finished the book within 3 weeks, so that’s not too bad and we’re going to read the next one. I can say I’m not looking forward to it too much. =)