Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year Published: 2008
Genre: Young Adult novel
Serialization: First of trilogy
Rating: 6/10
Premise: Following a failed uprising by the twelve districts, the Capitol of Collins’ world has instituted a brutal gladiatorial deathmatch to be fought by district children between the ages of 12-18 in order to suppress any potential will to rebel. The annual Hunger Games are an occasion of morbid spectacle, and even districts who don’t want to watch their tributes fight to the death are forced to participate in the morbid revelry. When Katniss Everdeen’s twelve-year-old sister is selected by the random lottery to participate, the sixteen-year-old volunteers to go in her stead. She may be good at hunting illegal game to supplement her family’s meager rations, but that might not be enough to help her survive against the Career tributes who have trained their entire lives for a shot at the glamour granted to the lone survivor of the Games.

Review: I actually really enjoyed reading this book while I was reading it, but as soon as I finished it I realized how ridiculous it was. I really wanted this book to be more than it was – I liked the wide cast of characters that Collins spun, I liked the suspense and the pacing of the adventure components of the book, and I felt pleasantly enthralled by the story. But there are some really, really big problems with it that prevent me from recommending it wholeheartedly.

First of all, the premise of the plot is utterly ludicrous. A regime that forces 24 children aged 12-18 selected by random lottery to fight to the death every year and then rewards the sole victor with a lifetime of splendor and celebrity isn’t going to be a regime that’s in place for long. Especially considering that this regime is pretty much your prototypical bourgeoisie: they extract heavy taxes from the district, there are strict rations and regulations (hunting for game, for example, is disallowed), and there are KBG-esque citizen spies everywhere. Oh, and did I mention that poor kids could put in more submissions for their names in exchange for food, thereby increasing the likelihood that the poor kids will be the ones chosen for the contest? I know.

Even the Games themselves, taken for what they are, stretch credulity – for example, rules are changed arbitrarily in order to generate the maximum amount of “viewership” and sympathy. The children are coached and dressed and interviewed much as pageant contestants might be, but only given three weeks of physical training. What if the spoiled 12-year-old child of a rich family, who has never lifted anything heavier than a fork, goes up against ruthless 18-year-old career contestants? You really would have me believe that an entire country would just sit back and blithely watch it on TV? And then, if that weren’t enough, there’s a healthy gambling industry built solely on the Games, and children can actually attract sponsors through their pageant interviews. These sponsors could then in turn pay for tools during the Games to give their wards a leg up. Come on, Collins. Few things light the fire of rebellion better than the brazen and systematic slaughtering of children for nationally-televised sport.

Even if a regime would have been stupid enough to institute the barbaric spectacle of The Hunger Games as a sort of misguided way to remind the districts of just how completely the Capitol controlled them, there’s no way they would’ve lasted the eighty-some years they supposedly did. In fact, the premise is so entirely unlikely that I almost wonder if Collins was handed this plot by a publisher and told to do her best with it – the rest of her writing certainly doesn’t make her seem like a raving lunatic lacking even the most basic sense of human psychology.

I like Katniss a lot as a protagonist, but I like her mostly for the potential of what she could have been. Her history, disposition, and peer network could’ve made for a really complex individual. On paper, unfortunately, her emotions are far too stark; her protectiveness of her younger sister, her inner conflict towards her mom, her obliviousness towards her own emotions for her childhood friend, her rapidly-changing opinions of pretty much everyone, all come across as bland and leaden. Furthermore, the people around her are often described in fairly one-dimensional terms. There are a lot of characters who had the potential to be really fascinating–Cinna, for example, as a cynical fashionista in charge of coming up with Katniss’ public image for The Games, is one of my favourite characters–yet they’re largely glossed over for clumsy exposition. Any emotional turmoil that the characters go through are explained to the reader as though to a particularly slow toddler.

Finally, the resolution of the story is highly unsatisfactorily for two reasons. First of all, Katniss circumvents the rule that only one person may survive the Games by threatening to kill both herself and her friend, thereby depriving the Capitol of a victor and forcing the authorities to intervene before their dual-suicide succeeds. Leaving aside the worrying implications of suggesting suicide to children as a way of sticking it to The Man, I also find it incredibly hard to believe that in eighty years of battle, this is the first year the contestants in the Game have come close to mutual destruction. The children are provided with mines, for heaven’s sake – all it would take is a mine in the wrong location for the entire cast to be lost…and then what happens to the precious ratings?

Secondly, Katniss seems to have learned nothing throughout the progress of the book – not about how to comport herself to ensure her survival, not about how to plot and scheme, or how to read people. Furthermore, the Capitol also hasn’t acquired any more nuance, and remains the unequivocally evil Goliath it was introduced as at the beginning of the book. I don’t have any feeling for the depth of the world beyond the deep-seated and very dryly written resentment that Katniss carries for anyone who is not her friend or family.

The effects of Collins’ writing style reminds me a lot of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Collins has something good going here, but she’s trying to be more epic than she is capable of writing, and it shows in the way-too-obvious foreshadowing and the shallow character development. Still, it was an enjoyable read, and if you’re looking for a fluffy bit of fun this might be for you.